We covered the fact Apple is taking around $100 off Mac purchases today online at Apple.com as well as in Apple retail stores, but with $100 off, the 11″ MacBook Air with 128GB drive is effectively the same price as the 13″ MacBook Air with 128GB drive. Our question to you is, which one would you get, and is anyone taking Apple up on their Black Friday offer? We went with the 13″ laptop, but the 11″ is still tempting us from afar.

Read

Apple didn’t exactly surprise the tech world with a MacBook Air update at its Back To The Mac event a couple weeks ago. The infamously-thin notebook hadn’t been updated in over 500 days, and there were more rumors and leaks on the unannounced product than we could shake a stick at. When the new Air was finally revealed, we got a look at some decent to very-good specifications, an even better and thinner design, and a more functional and useful product; that’s not to mention the device’s 11-inch baby brother which retails for only $999. We did our hands on thing with the 11-inch unit, but, in our eyes, it proved to be too small for daily use, so we’ve gone ahead and reviewed the 13-inch model. Read on for our thoughts!For starters, the new MacBook Air, even though it’s not drastically externally-different from the first one, seems like a completely new product — especially since we only used the first, first generation laptop. The two USB ports, something that should have been standard all along, have finally appeared and — thankfully — on opposite sides of the notebook. This way, you can plug in multiple USB devices without having to worry about them knocking into each other and making only one of them usable at a time. There’s an SD card slot on the right side of the device, a mini display port just next to it, and a headphone jack and a mic on the left.

It feels like Apple has evolved the MacBook Air into a new class of notebooks — one based solely around solid-state parts to give users an “instant” experience — much like how an iPad operates. There is no user-accessible anything on this computer, no hard drive access, RAM access, nothing. This allows the computer to literally boot in around 15 seconds from a powered-down state, wake almost instantly from sleep, and also enter into what Apple calls a “deep sleep.” This new mode will allow the computer to practically stay in suspended animation for up to 30 days. This is also in addition to around 7 hours of “real world usage” battery life, which we can confirm is reasonably accurate.

Now, what have we missed since we switched from a 15-inch Core i5 8GB RAM 256GB SSD MacBook Pro? Honestly, you’re going to laugh, but not much. Sure incredibly intensive tasks take longer on the MacBook Air, but realistically we haven’t noticed a day to day difference in 95% of the work we do. Even something as complex as importing 1GB of HD video into iMovie ’11, editing the footage, and exporting and uploading a movie trailer creation was effortless. It took us around 7 minutes to export and upload a high quality movie trailer.

Aperture also functions very swiftly on the 1.86GHz machine with 2GB RAM that we’re using, and Photoshop — in our normal usage — hasn’t bogged down or hampered our workflow once.

We’re always carrying a notebook to and from the office, covering events in real time, and working from the car. The sacrifice in raw horsepower from switching from a MacBook Pro is dwarfed by the amazingly light and sufficiently speedy Air. We can’t even look at the 15-inch MacBook Pro the same, and this is what the future of all Apple notebooks will be someday. The MacBook Air barely has heated up on us, and we have barely heard the one singular fan within humming away — a real testament to how perfectly engineered the notebook is. We have no doubt that Apple will slowly transition even the MacBook Pro into a much thinner, portable product. If we had to bet, we’d be willing to say that the MacBook Air will replace the MacBook category, be called simply a MacBook, and the MacBook Pro will be left at the top, though slimmed down a bit.

For all our praises, there are definitely a couple things that bugged us about the new unit, though obviously nothing big enough to deter us from making it our main machine. We’re not thrilled with the visibility of the caps lock key — of all things — it’s a very faint green and it’s difficult to see when it’s active or not. It also requires more pressure than the rest of the keyboard, at least on our unit.

We miss the backlit keyboard which existed on the first generation MacBook Air and we miss the ambient light sensor even though we basically would fight it on all occasions. Not having an ethernet port is also a slight bummer, but we understand the port physically wouldn’t fit height wise with the notebook’s design. Still, we’ll have to carry a USB ethernet adapter at all times in the event Wi-Fi isn’t available, and it will take up one of the USB ports.

All things considered, what the new MacBook Air is, is an advancement of the laptop in ways that no other manufacturer has come close to touching. It’s not the least expensive option out there, though we wouldn’t necessarily call the most expensive option either. What the MacBook Air has done, is slowly start to transform the laptop industry much like the iPad and iOS have started to transform the mobile industry. Soon, all laptops will not require moving parts, they will also offer almost instant boot times, run cool, run fast, and they’ll be thin. Because thin is in.

We just scored a brand new Apple MacBook Air 11″ laptop at the 5th Ave store, and well, how could we not report back what we think of it? For starters, and this has probably been said already, but you really need to see this in person to appreciate how absolutely slim and compact this thing is. Our major concern has to be the processor, as this wasn’t a built-to-order unit it’s only rockin’ a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM — not the slowest thing out there, but obviously on the slower end of the spectrum. We’re happy to say in our very limited use of the computer so far, we haven’t been frustrated or annoyed by the speed. There will most likely be a different story to be told after we push it to the limits, but for a computer that’s not meant to be subjected to torture every second of the day, we could see ourselves carrying this and not our 15″ MacBook Pro. In terms of the 11.6″ display, we have to say that we’re loving it. So far. We have some great photos of the new MacBook Air in our gallery, and have some comparison photos to the 13″ previous generation Air as well as our 15″ MacBook Pro.

Click on over to our MacBook Air hands on gallery!

Today, Verizon Wireless announced that the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab would be available, starting November 11, for $600. The device will be sold for its full retail price with no data plan requirement; a $20, 1GB monthly plan can be added post-purchase. No word on whether the $20 data plan is month-to-month (like the iPad) or contract based; we’ve reached out to Verizon for clarification and will update the article when we hear back.

Hit the jump for the full press release. Anyone adding this to their holiday wish-list? What do you think of the price?

UPDATE: Verizon Wireless has just responded to our query. The $20 data plan is a month-to-month offering — just like the iPad — no contract required.

Verizon Wireless Puts Samsung Galaxy Tab™ in Stores in November

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and DALLAS, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ — Verizon Wireless and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) today announced the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy Tab™ will be available Nov. 11 for $599.99. Running on Android™ 2.2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab features a brilliant 7-inch touch screen; robust HTML Web browsing experience with full support for Adobe® Flash® 10.1 for video and mobile gaming; and a 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird Application processor.

“This is an incredible time in mobile technology, and as a company we’re excited to add the Samsung Galaxy Tab to our portfolio,” said Marni Walden, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. “The Samsung Galaxy Tab brings together the reliability of Verizon Wireless’ 3G network and the power of Android 2.2 to deliver on our promise of providing consumers and business customers with a host of options to help manage their lives.”

Popular mobile applications, including V CAST Music and V CAST Song ID, VZ Navigator®, Slacker Radio, Kindle for Android, BLOCKBUSTER On Demand® presented by V CAST Video, and the exclusive golf game, “Let’s Golf,” will be available on the Samsung Galaxy Tab. In addition to text, picture and video messaging, the Samsung Galaxy Tab will also feature V CAST Apps, Verizon Wireless’ mobile storefront offering hundreds of applications for businesses and consumers at launch.

Verizon Wireless customers can add a monthly access plan beginning at $20 a month for 1 GB on their Samsung Galaxy Tab. For additional features and specifications on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, visit www.verizonwireless.com/galaxytab.

For additional information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.

Read

Reuters is reporting that the United Arab Emirates and BlackBarry manufacturer Research In Motion have resolved differences that could have potentially left 500,000 BlackBerry subscribers without data services after October 11. “The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has confirmed that Blackberry services are now compliant with the UAE’s telecommunications regulatory framework,” reported WAM, a state run news agency. “All Blackberry services in the UAE will continue to operate as normal and no suspension of service will occur on October 11, 2010,” the news outlet continued. The UAE had threatened to shutter BlackBerry data services due to their inability to access RIM servers through legal means if necessary; BlackBerry data was handled by servers outside of the UAE which created a security and sovereignty nightmare for the Arab state. The WAM report also gave kudos to Research In Motion, citing “positive engagement” and professional “collaboration” from the Canadian company.

Read

Here’s an interesting development, it looks like AT&T and Microsoft will be holding a Windows Phone 7 event on October 11. Despite Microsoft’s own website billing the “Worldwide Launch Event” for 3:00 PM on October 11 with T-Mobile in tow, we’ve just been sent an invitation to a 9:30 AM October 11th event; complete with appearances by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega. Looks like AT&T may be the exclusive launch partner for Windows Phone 7 after all… even if it is only for a few hours.

The folks over at alienbabeltech.com have been doing some serious sleuthing. While looking at the GLBenchmark 1.1 database, they discovered a phone with very impressive stats that until now was virtually unknown, the HTC Glacier. The phone’s benchmarks are quite impressive, nearly 3x faster than the 1 GHz EVO 4G in some instances, which leads the author to believe that this phone has been manufactured with some sort of dual-core processor (perhaps the Qualcomm chip that was announced back on June 1st). The blog assumes that the device will be carried by vendor T-Mobile as the device was tested by a person with the username “mbibik”; a user who has only tested T-Mobile devices in the past and who has a LinkedIn page that says he works for T-Mobile (he has since made his employment details private). Other things discovered in the documentation include: the device will run the Android OS, have OpenGL 1.1, and have a screen resolution of 800 x 480. After compiling all of this, the blog hypothesizes that the rumored “Project Emerald” from T-Mobile is actually the dual-core, Android powered, HTC Glacier. What do you think, believable? Hit up the read link for the full article.

Read

And so the cat and mouse game continues — Palm found a loop hole that would allow it to provide Pre iTunes syncing out of the box… Apple said it would plug the hole… Palm said go for it, big guy… Apple plugged the hole… Palm found a new hole and re-enabled iTunes syncing with last night’s webOS 1.1 release. Can anyone guess what will happen next? Now worries though, as webOS 1.1 brings with it plenty of new features and functionality beyond iTunes syncing, such as several additions to Exchange support including remote wipe, PIN/password requirements, inactivity timeout, improved certificate handling, and more. Beyond that, a bevy of undocumented changes were outed last night as well. Hit the jump for the full list.

• Changed sound for notifications – You still can’t change them yourself, but the new sound is much richer, if a little quieter
• Animated drop down menus – they look really slick and really change the experience. The Context menus also have some nice animation.
• Lots of Photo app improvements. A more distinct bar between all photos and your albums in the photo app, plus they’re calling the Screenshot album “Screen Captures.” The preview thumbs also slide in from the right.  Faster photo rendering. Overall the Photos app feels much more fully baked.
• Emailing Memos – The memo app now has a menu option to email a memo.
• A new font for the Browser – uses Palm’s system font and, truly, it looks fantastic.
• Disabled the key combo in browser to open in a new card.  Boo-urns.
• Javascript interpreter Performance upgrades – this will speed up virtually everything and is great news
• Better Gmail handling – not failing when you tap on a notification for an email you’d already archived on the desktop
• A new icon for AIM
• More auto-complete / auto correct entries in the dictionary.
• With the slider open, the Center button now turns on the screen, where as before you had to hit a keyboard key or the power button.

So, Pre fans, definitely hit the updater if you haven’t already and enjoy the new features above along with iTunes sync — at least until Apple kills it again.

[Via PreCentral]

Read

Following some big announcements from Europe earlier this week, it looks like Palm Pre owners on this side of the pond have some good news to look forward to as well. Word on the street suggests that Palm is prepping to unwrap webOS 1.1 within a month or so and the focus will be better positioning in the enterprise market by way of Exchange Active Sync enhancements and improved security. Rumored updates include:

• IT-initiated remote wipe
• Required PIN
• PIN complexity (numeric or alphanumeric)
• Device wipe after a certain number of failed PIN attempts
• Auto-lock after X minutes of inactivity
• Improved digital certificates

The Pre may also receive a number of new applications to coincide with webOS 1.1 hitting the scene, though it is unclear whether these new apps will be Palm-built or third-party additions to the App Catalog. So what say you, Pre owners — looking forward to the update or are there other features Palm appears to be holding off on that you’re waiting for?

Read

Someone said somethin about a Magic being detected in the states and someone having a negative reaction to that being that it hasn’t officially been released in the states. May be some measure Google is taking to prevent Magic use in the states prior to its official release (on the assumption that G builds are somehow registering as Magics w/ the Market). this seems like the most logical theory to me at this point. Which means we’ll all eventually be able to use the G builds again… once the magic has been released in the states if this theory is correct.

Though nothing has been confirmed at this point, it certainly makes sense. The discussion goes on but if you’re a fan of the Android Market is looks like you’ve got a choice to make before upgrading with haykuro’s Cupcake: sit tight for a while longer while Google finishes up development on 1.5 and finally pushes it out, or forgo Android Market access and start enjoying stereo Bluetooth, virtual keyboards, an improved browser and plenty more.

UPDATE: A clarification from the tipster posted in the comments section below (looks like you can still have your Cupcake and eat it, too — for the time being):

I want to clarify that this is currently only affecting one of the two haykuro cupcake builds. The “G” aka “google-sourced” line. There is a second “H” aka “HTC-sourced” line that is currently unaffected by this Market change. So if you get the “H” build, you’ll still have market access. For Now.

Thanks, Jon!

Read

Last month we introduced the BGR Mobile app for the iPhone and iPod Touch and thanks to our awesome readers, it has definitely been a success. Nothing is perfect however — especially not a v1 app — and we’ve kept our noses to the grindstone, continuously working on improvements. We’ve also listened to what our readers had to say and we’ve done our best to juice up our i-offering as much as possible over the past month. So now we’re very excited to announce that BGR Mobile version 1.1 is ready and waiting for all you iPhone and iPod Touch-toting BGR fans out there. Sure it took a little bit longer to hit the App Store than we had hoped but the wait was definitely worth it. Version 1.1 has a bunch of tweaks such as adjustable font sizes, behind the scenes enhancements and most importantly, it loads the article reel like greased lightning. Don’t take our word for it though – hit the read link to download the app from iTunes, search BGR in the App Store on your handset, or just open the App Store on your handset to update from version 1. Oh and of course feel free to let us know how we did in the comments section.

Read [iTunes Link]