Apple unveils “the thinnest notebook in the world” – the MacBook Air. Apple went and looked at most of the thinnest notebooks – Sony TZ series, for example and tried to distill the best of all of them –

• ~3 lbs
• 0.16 to 0.76 inches thin, 12.8 inches wide and 8.95 inches deep
• 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 × 800 pixel resolution
• full sized MacBook-style black keyboard with Ambient light sensor
• built-in iSight
• multi-touch trackpad (Move a window by double-tap and move. Rotate a photo by pivoting your index finger around your thumb)
• 80GB drive as standard, 64GB SSD as an option
• 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo as standard chip which operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, and uses an 800MHz frontside bus (1.8 GHz as an upgrade)
• 45w MagSafe
• 1 USB 2.0 port
• Micro-DVI
• 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1/EDR
• 5 hour battery life
• 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM

The MacBook Air runs from 0.76″ to 0.16″. The thickest part of the MacBook AIr is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony TZ series. So thin it fits in a manila envelope. This crazy thin MacBook is silver, got a camera with more rounded edges.

Fullsize, 13.3″ widescreen display. LED-backlit display saves power, gives bright display, instant-on the minute you open it. There’s a built-in iSight camera, and a fullsize MacBook-style black keyboard. “Perhaps the best notebook keyboard we’ve ever shipped.” And it’s got a backlit keyboard with an ambient light sensor (previously a MacBook Pro-only feature). Multi-touch gesture support on the trackpad. There’s a preferences pane that lets you turn on a bunch of different gestures and it gives you a video that shows you what things do. Double-tap and then you can drag the cursor around. Pan around a large photo with two fingers. Rotate with a two-finger interface, like turning a dial. Three fingers lets you pan through photos, and of course there’s a real pinch interface for zooming in or out.

Hard drive is a 1.8″ 80GB (with an option of a 64GB solid-state disk). It’s about the length of a pencil. Amazing feat of engineering and there is no compromise on performance. Core 2 Duo chip on the board at 1.6GHz standard with an option to go to 1.8GHz. They asked Intel to consider something: Apple wanted the chip, but needed the same die on a smaller package. So Intel engineered the same chip but made it 60% smaller.

What do we do with optical drive?

Movies, install software, backups, burn music CDs. Here’s why we don’t need to do that: wirelessly rental movies, most of us have iPods instead of CDs, for backups Time Machine and Time Capsule to wirelessly backup.

So what about installing software?

Going to do that wirelessly too. New feature built into MacBook Air OS called Remote Disk, under Devices. It’ll show you all the Macs and PCs in the area with special software (Macs or Windows machines). You can ask to borrow a machine’s optical drive. Once they’ve accepted, you can see what they’re disc is. A PC can even read a Mac disc with this special software. Click on it, and it’s just like having a local optical drive. “That’s how we’re going to install stuff. Wirelessly.” Don’t think users will miss optical drive.

They didn’t want to compromise on battery life. With wireless turned on, they still eked out 5 hours of battery life. So, a 3 lbs., 0.16″-.76″ thickness, 13.3″ fullsize display, fullsize keyboard (backlit), multi-touch gestures, iSight camera, 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory, 80GB hard drive (64GB SSD optional), 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and Magsafe connector — price starts at $1,799.

Apple is taking pre-orders today onwards and will ship them in two weeks.

The MacBook Air has a fully recyclable aluminum case. It also has the first mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free. And the retail packaging is 56 percent less volume than MacBook packaging. Helps with energy for transporting and disposing of materials. MacBook Air joins MacBook and MacBook Pro, “best note books in the industry.”

Visit;

• MacBook Air
• MacBook Guided Tour
• View the MacBook Air Ad
• Image Gallery of MacBook Air at Gizmodo
• MacWorld’s details on MacBook Air

More power with less power
Inside the new Mac Pro is the latest technology from Intel – Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors. These processors run at blazingly fast speeds up to 3.2GHz.

Cache count
A huge amount of L2 cache — 12MB per processor — keeps frequently used data and instructions close to the processor cores and improves overall performance. 6MB of cache is shared between pairs of processor cores, allowing an individual core to use all the available shared cache at any one time.

Built at full tilt With the fastest Xeon architecture available, the new Mac Pro features 1600MHz dual independent frontside buses. These 64-bit buses give each processor a direct connection to the system controller and deliver improved processor bandwidth of up to 25.6GB per second — 20 percent greater than the previous Mac Pro. With a new system architecture, speedier system buses, and fast 800MHz DDR2 fully buffered DIMM memory, Mac Pro memory throughput is up to 1.6 times faster than before. Every Intel Xeon processor features an enhanced SSE4 SIMD engine. Capable of completing 128-bit vector computations in a single cycle, SSE4 is ideal for transforming large sets of data, such as applying a filter to an image or rendering a video effect.

Smarter memory
The Mac Pro incorporates a 256-bit-wide, fully buffered memory architecture with Error Correction Code (ECC), which corrects single-bit errors and detects multiple-bit errors automatically. These features are especially important in mission-critical or compute-intensive environments. Apple designed a more stringent thermal specification for the Mac Pro FB-DIMMs, so the internal fans spin at slower speeds and keep the system quiet.

Prices for the Mac Pro start at $2,799 for a machine running two 2.8-GHz quad-core Xeons with 2GB of memory, the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card and a 320GB SATA drive. At the top of the configuration line, a machine tricked out with two 3.2-GHz processors, 32GB of memory, the Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 graphics card, a RAID card and four 1TB internal drives prices out at a whopping $18,199. The extra RAM alone adds $9,100 to the bottom line of that machine. The Mac Pro comes with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, Apple’s newest client operating system.

Xserve

Along with the new Mac Pro announcement, Apple also refreshed its Xserve server to include the same 45nm Penryn-family Xeon processors, the first time since August 2006 that it has punched up its 1U rack-mounted server. The Xserve, which starts at the same $2,999 as its base-line predecessor, comes with an unlimited client license edition of Leopard Server, boasts three drive bays and can be equipped with up to 32GB of memory. For $2,999, buyers get a server running a single 2.8-GHz quad-core Xeon, 2GB of memory, an 80GB SATA drive and dual Gigabit Ethernet on board.

The new Xserve is actually the more important of the two systems, argued an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc., because it “draws attention to the Leopard Server operating system’s capabilities as a small-business or departmental server for organizations with limited IT support.” While both new models significantly improve on characteristics of the machines they replace, the analyst said the Xserve and the Leopard Server operating system make a more compelling case.

Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard features a stunning new look across the entire system including a sleek new Dock with Stacks, a simple way to quickly organize and access your files. You can use Cover Flow to see your files in the Finder and browse through them like you browse through album art in iTunes. Quick Look gives you instant, full size previews of your documents, images and movies without opening an application. And Time Machine provides an effortless way to automatically backup everything on your Mac. These innovations plus Spaces, Boot Camp and major enhancements to Mail and iChat, make Leopard and its more than 300 new features the richest release of Mac OS X yet.

The program ends on January 26, 2008. Orders must be postmarked or faxed January 26, 2008, so order your upgrade now.

Apple have released a MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1 which fixes the responsiveness issue on MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook computers.

The Mac OS X 10.5.1 update is required before installing the MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1.

A Mac empowers you with advanced capabilities and a new level of confidence. You can unleash your creativity. Differentiate your business and build your brand. And work from almost anywhere. Without worrying about your technology.

When should I use it?

It really depends on the situation. Some users will experience WLAN issues based on the specific products they have in their home in this case use Interference Robustness. Others will face WLAN issues because they either live or work in a highly populated area such as an apartment building or office building. This would be an ideal time to use Interference Robustness. Basically, whenever you face WLAN interference that is caused by outside variables, Interference Robustness will help.

If it cuts down on interference, shouldn’t I leave it on all the time?

No. This is very important to understand. Using Interference Robustness will essentially slow down your wireless connection. As discussed above, if you’re looking for speed, you send a high frequency of large packets. If you’re looking to battle interference you send smaller packets at a lower frequency. So your connection will be slow but strong.

Read the article in full.

Today, let me try to compile a list of applications that you’ll need on the Mac after conversion from a Windows world. This should apply to anyone who is new to the Mac. Nonetheless, you may need few more additional applications depending on your profession. For instance, a Developer who do Design with (Photoshop, XHTML, CSS) will have a slightly different set of applications than a Rich Internet Application Developer (Flash, ActionScript, Flex, Ajax). Whereas, a user who does more of a Community Liaison will have a bit of more slightly different software sets. I may be slightly biased but my observation will be more tuned towards a power Internet User, Web Developer, Multimedia Developer and of course Bloggers.

Most applications listed below will have preference of Free and Open Source over their commercial counterparts. But this will not rule out the fact that some of commercial applications are better than their free, open source competitors. There are many articles written by renowned Mac Users, Mac Enthusiasts, Industry Experts and Gurus about Windows to Mac conversion – the applications to use, et al. This article would be best treated as compliments to such articles and the final decision be taken with your own experience. Most of the Mac applications mentioned here will be cross referenced to their Windows counterpart at the later section of the article, so it will help new converts more effectively. This article will be updated as and when need arises.

Special Thanks to the following Mac Enthusiast who shared their experience with many of the softwares listed below. The list would have been far from complete without them.

• Glenn Wolsey
• Paul Stamatiou
• Derek Punsalan

COST of the Mac Applications listed here sums up to a little over $2,000. The good news is that, an economical/optimal listing can be managed within $200 and a Professional/Advanced listing can be done in about $1,300.

Download the Excel Sheet which I was working on that list the Applications along with their price.

Disclaimer : I’ve neither affiliation nor endorsement for any of the Softwares mentioned in this article.

APPLE MAC APPLICATIONS

EMAIL
Thunderbird is a good option but why look anywhere else when Mac OS X comes with a kick ass Mail Management software – Mail. It has never been this great with emails before. If you are regular with NewsGroups, then Mail won’t be able to do on its own. Thunderbird’s latest Alpha release is a good News Reader.

BROWSER
Safari is good but with Firefox’s add-ons, Firefox comes out as the clear winner. There are Mac enhanced version of Firefox for PPC and the Intel Mac, but I finds the new Firefox 2.0 good and fast enough.

RSS FEED READER
There are many good and free RSS Feed Reader for the mac. After trying out many of them, I settled for NetNewsWire.

PASSWORD MANAGER
KeepassX is an open source Mac counterpart of KeePass (windows) and I never needed to try another Password Management Software. I’m extremely satisfied and happy with KeepassX. 1Passwd and Wallet are commercial alternatives and I’ve heard many good reviews about the same.

INSTANT MESSENGER
Look no further; Adium is open source and the best All-in-One Instant Messenger.

OFFICE SUITE
Here again, I’ve not found any good free or open source Office Suite though NeoOffice came very close. It is sluggish but you can live with it if you don’t use it regularly. NeoOffice is a port of OpenOffice for the Mac. If you are a regular user of Powerpoint Presentations, Documents etc, then you have to stick to Microsoft Office for Mac. I have trying my hand on Keynote which is a part of the iWork Bundle.

STICKIES, NOTES
I use the stickies that comes with OSX but yet to get used to it. I would rather love to use xPad – a notepad, sticky combination. I bought xPad few months back, but you’re lucky, as it now a freeware. Glenn Wolsey says that he is looking forward to Apple Mail 3 for the sticky, notes feature.

TEXT EDITOR
A Text Editor is like your Shoe. I’ve not really found a Text Editor of my ultimate choice though Smultron, which is a freeware, comes very close. May be that I’ve not found my love, I just stick to Eclipse to even write/edit blog articles offline. WriteRoom is a good one if you plan to do some serious writing concentrating totally on your writing. WriteRoom is no longer freeware and is a shareware by now. Apple Pages which is bundled with iWorks is another alternative from Apple.

Well, I switched to TextMate recently, and it makes me feel right at home with many similar features that I enjoyed with TextPad. My final decision is thus with TextMate as the ultimate Text Editor. In fact, I’ve an additional license right now (from the MacHeist Bundle) and am thinking of gifting it away.

IMAGE EDITOR
Photoshop for the real graphic work. For all the other quick and fast image manipulation – cropping, resizing (which you do for dropping on to your blog articles), I would high recommend ImageWell.

FTP
There are many free and open source FTP Program for the Mac but I’ve not found one that comes close to FileZilla or WS_FTP on Windows. After testing many FTP applications for the mac including but not limited to CyberDuck, Fetch, etc. I settled for the commercial software, Transmit. It is perhaps the best FTP Program for the Mac. Transmit is worth every penny of it. I like it so much, I gifted another copy to a good friend of mine.

ADD/REMOVE or UNINSTALLER
On a Mac, it is said that you can simply Trash an APP and that’s it. However, when you delete an APP, many of its dependent, related libraries are left over on your Mac. AppDelete which is free is an amazing software to uninstall/remove your installed applications. It may be noted that AppDelete cannot delete dependent files separately and is very basic. If you are looking for a serious Uninstaller/Remover then AppZapper is the one. AppZapper does an amazing job at just $12.95 (this is a one time purchase with lifetime upgrades). AppZapper can list out all the applications on your mac, remove preference panes files, widgets, plugins, screen savers. It even allows you to delete just the Support Folder, .plists etc.

TORRENT
I tried Azureus, BitRocket, Transmission but I find Xtorrent to be the best torrent software for the Mac so far. However, you may just stay with Transmission which is an open source and light application instead of XTorrent which is not going to be free afterall.

LOCAL WEB SERVER
MAMP is an Out-of-the-Box solution for your local webserver needs. It comes inbuilt with an Apache server running PHP, MySQL and SQLite complete with eAccelerator, phpMyAdmin, SQLiteManager and is extremely easy to setup. While the free version is good enough, there is a Pro version of MAMP that will set you back by $49.00.

MUSIC PLAYER, MANAGER
iTunes from Apple.

VIDEO PLAYER
Quicktime from Apple, the open source Media Player VLC is a good alternative.

PHOTO MANAGEMENT
iPhoto from Apple. More advanced professional photographers seem to prefer Aperture. However, iPhoto is far and enough for all your photos. Get FlickrExport if you want to upload photos to Flickr from iPhoto directly, efficiently and easily. I beta tested Adobe Photoshop LightRoom but it was too heavy for common users, let’s leave that for professional photographers.

DEVELOPMENT IDE
Eclipse and/or the various Distros including Flex Builder, CFEclipse, MyEclipse, WPT is the supreme Development IDE.

GAMES (casual break play)
I stopped playing games long back. For light play, I like Minesweeper alternative for the Mac, Chess and of course the Titris clone – Quine.

UTILITIES / BACKUPS / BURNERS / MISC
Toast Titanium is the ultimate Disc Burning Application. However, Burn is good open source alternative with a less features for the less demanding users. While we wait for the Time Machine in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard, SuperDuper would do a good job to Backup and Clone your data. SVN is good for Version Control of your Projects, codes. You can integrate SVN with Finder. QuickSilver is an awesome tool to help you work easily with applications, contacts, music, and other data.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS SOFTWARES

This article’s target is mostly those new Windows-to-Mac converts, so it would be fare if I complete the article with the Windows Software counterparts to the Must-Have Software list. However, I’ve not used Windows in the past 8-10 months and the list here are from what I used earlier.

EMAIL / RSS FEED READER / NEWS READER
Thunderbird is an extremely good email program. With its 2.0 alpha release, it even has NewsReader support besides email and RSS feed management. However, for the business professionals Microsoft Outlook fare better with its easy integration with many other softwares, sync data, take notes. I was a heavy Outlook user with the Newsgator Inbox plugin to read and manage RSS Feeds. FeedDemon is the ultimate Standalone RSS Feed Reader. My reason for using Newsgator Inbox Plugin was that it was able to double up as a NewsReader too.

BROWSER
Of course, Firefox. Internet Explorer, Opera etc can be used for testing.

FTP
I started off using WS_FTP which is a commercial software but moved to FileZilla, an open source FTP Program which is an amazing software. Unless one is a sys-admin or do heavy FTP stuffs, FileZilla will fit the requirements. I find WS_FTP to be a real heavyweight.

ADD/REMOVE or UNINSTALLER
Windows comes with its own Add/Remove Software inbuilt though there are other commercial softwares that does much more enhanced functions. However, the one that comes with Windows is enough in most cases.

PASSWORD MANAGER
Keepass is a free and extremely cool Password Management Software.

INSTANT MESSENGER
The standard version is free but the one time license Pro version of Trillian is my ultimate choice for the All-in-One Instant Messenger. There are many other good competitors but I never tried any of them and was happy with Trillian.

OFFICE SUITE
Microsoft Office Suite is not cheap at all at. If you are fine with a little sluggish replacement then of course OpenOffice is the ultimate Microsoft Office replacement.

STICKIES, NOTES
The Notes of Microsoft Outlook never worked for me and thus I turned to Stickies. It is free and an extremely efficient sticky for Windows.

TEXT EDITOR
If you are not comfortable with it, you will never be productive. The Windows Notepad is never enough for anybody and everybody have some sorta Text Editor of their choice. I would not really say which is the best as many of them are equally good, it was just a matter of habit and discipline one develops with a particular Text Editor. There are a plethora of Text Editor ranging from commercial Paidware to Freeware and open source ones. My ultimate choice was Textpad which is a paidware. If you are looking for a free one, then Notepad++ is the ultimate choice.

IMAGE EDITOR
Of course for the real, actual graphic work, it is Photoshop. Paint.Net is a free and a nifty tool for quick and fast image manipulation.

TORRENT
I never really use torrents so, it would not be that accurate but Azureus was a good enough tool for me.

LOCAL WEBSERVER
There are lots for windows, my favorite was WAMP.

MUSIC PLAYER, MANAGER
WinAmp is not bad but iTunes is the de facto Music Player, Manager.

VIDEO PLAYER
Windows Media Player, QuickTime, VLC.

PHOTO MANAGEMENT
ACDSee. People find irfanView to be a good and free alternative but I was never happy with it.

GAMES
Games have their own realm and I am not a gamer at all. Thus, I am not good with this section. My usual first task after a successful windows installation was to remove all the Games. However, on a lighter vein, if I have to play something, then it was either Solitaire or Minesweeper.

DEVELOPMENT IDE
Eclipse and its variants including, Flex Builder, CFEclipse, MyEclipse, WPT. TopStyle Pro is my favorite CSS Editor and I would even recommend it highly for beginners. It has a good context sensitive help, CSS sweeping (cleaning) capability. However, Eclipse even can be a wonderful CSS Editor if plugged in with a CSS Editor Plugin. Aptana standalone or the plugin is a good Web Development IDE for Eclipse. Color Schemer is a good tool if you are involved with designs.

UTILITIES / BACKUPS / BURNERS / MISC
Nero is one of the professional Media Burner. However, a free burning software which does most of the common task is CDBurnerXP Pro. TortoiseSVN is a must-have SVN tool.

The AdCenter is also rumored to be not compatible with Microsoft Vista as well.

Here is supposedly an email received from Microsoft. The names have been XXXed to ensure privacy.

Dear Sir/Ma’am,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft AdCenter Support, my name is XXXXXX.

The latency that you are encountering is being caused by the operating system you are using, which is the Mac. At this time AdCenter is not compatible with Macs, and is compatible with the following:

-Windows 98 or later, not including Vista
-Internet Explorer 6 or later
-Firefox 1.5

…

Support Representative, US Microsoft AdCenter Team