God, I love being right...

Hey.

Remember back in the day when I said that Liquidmetal would be used to make the newest version of the Macbook Pro? Well another refresh came and went without a new body. New processors, graphics and features, sure. But it's still the same unibody design with the same materials. But there are very low rumblings that Jobs has another trick up his sleeve. Supposedly, if we aren't wiped out by The Rapture, Apple will release a completely redesigned Macbook Pro, possibly with the new "rapid, low-cost fabrication" metal. The company's stocks have seen a rise since rumors speculated that the newest version of the iphone would NOT be using liquidmetal and that it's most likely for the Macbook Pros. So I wasn't wrong, just a little early.

So bide your time and stock up on liquid nitrogen, in case it's nothing more than another trap from Skynet.

Yeah, it's the same joke. I'm lazy.

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle...

At today's Mac event, Commandant Jobs unveiled some fairly lackluster updates.

Something about iPhoto. I don't really care since I happily use picasa and flickr. And if I were to pay for something to edit my photos, I would save up until I could afford to get Aperture.

Something about Garage Band, which, again, is boring as I don't play music. I don't even play Rock Band for that matter.

But there were a couple of hopeful glimmers.

Jobs dropped the bomb that they were working on their next OS system: Lion. The biggest advances seem to be aimed at bringing the functionality of an iPad back to the Mac. this means they want to be able to run full-screen apps and have multi-touch control for the macs. If they can incorporate this multitouch into the next generation of Macbook Pros with the Liquidmetal design, the proposed cooling patents and somehow keep the machine from becoming sentient and trying to destroy mankind, it should be a pretty solid machine. But it kind of seems that Jobs has painted himself into a corner with the name of the system. Lion? The king of the jungle? What will they call the next OS afterwards? Sabretooth? Tabby? Or will there be a shift to a new animal-avatar? "Presenting Mac OSX...Koala."

Steve also managed to sneak in his characteristic "Once last thing..." before closing out the hour-and-a-half long schpiel. A newly redesigned Macbook Air. What really caught my attention about these updated models was the complete abandonment of a hard-drive. As of late I have been warming up to Solid-state Drives as the future of storage on computers. They're faster, quieter, cooler, smaller and less prone to mechanical problems than regular disc-based hard-drives. The new Airs instead use flash memory as storage. Consequently they are only able to hold between 64 Gb and 256GB. In a world where Terrabyte storage is becoming more common place and the Petabyte is looming ever closer, this amount of storage is paltry at best. And also, it might just be my own personal experience with the program Flash, but the name itself brings to mind negative connotations. Time will tell if this system will be preferred over regular hardware found in the grown-up version of laptops, or if this was merely the bastard son of a drunken tryst between a Macbook and an iPad.

Overall, it was another bland entry of a Mac Event. I guess I'm just jaded against anything that isn't a mind-blowing hardware revelation. Guess I'll just have to wait until the next generation of workhorse.

New Mac-1000

Over the weekend Apple signed an agreement with a Delaware-based company by the name of Liquidmetal Technologies for use of all filed patents. Liquidmetal specializes in exactly that, newly developed applications of their uniquely crafted, super-strong metal. They boast that it is twice as strong and weighs less than titanium.

Liquidmetal's website seems pretty dinky, having not been updated since 2007 and is laid out like a high school computer project. But if their products can live up to their claims this could be overlooked. check out their Youtube video of a bounce test of their material versus titanium and adamantium...or something.

I would think the main purpose of Mac's pursuit of this company would be as a new, stronger casing for Mac portable laptops. Imagine a Macbook Pro that cools fast, can take a fall unscathed and still run efficiently all while being about 20% thinner than the current models. This could mean an even longer battery charge for the already efficient models.

If this were to play out along with the rumored patent of using idle USB and Firewire ports as additional thermal vents, then the future models could be EXTREMELY efficient.

I'm kinda glad I didn't break down and buy one when they released the line-up with the new processors in April.

New Mac Update Makes Me Want to Rob a Bank.

After another year of hibernation, Mac has souped up their line of wallet-shattering Pros. Gizzy talks about it here, but you can scope the new products directly here.

Granted you can't get one until August. But if you can't render CGI, process RAW photos, download new Adobe software and look at Daily Puppy at the same time, you might want to think about getting one.

They start at $5000. I'm not even sure my car is worth that. If you spec it out enough it can run you close to $30,000. I'm positive my car isn't worth that. One thunderstorm and/or a glass of Cabernet later...

At any rate, if you're just looking for a new workhorse you might just want to wait until the end of the year when Mac is expected to quietly upgrade the Macbook Pro to include a 1 Tb hard drive to go with its already sexy i7 processor, who look to be bumped up to 2.8GHz as well.