As it turns out my predictions in a previous post were ALMOST on the money. The MacBook Pro line DID get updated today, LightPeak technology did make it in there, but no SSD or doing away with traditional hard drives...yet. Apparently the machines are a little lighter, contain a new chipset, have a new type of front-facing camera and are generally more powerful. Apple calls its version of the LightPeak technology Thunderbolt (after FireWire I guess it kind of makes sense).
Now we wait patiently for the March 2 announcement.
OK, so this is all Apple will show us. We are to infer from this that on March 2 the iPad 2 is coming out. Nice use of the number 2, and that calendar page is strategically ripped so as NOT to show us that front facing camera we have all been waiting for (or have we ?).
Patience, my friends, patience. All will be revealed in due course.
The rumour mill is working overtime. The latest one has to do with the MacBook Pro line. Supposedly on Thursday we will see an update to that line of computers at Apple. Most of the rumours stem from the fact that orders of new MacBook Pro laptops have been put on hold for a few days (imagine you buy a computer today only to find out three days later that a brand-new model came out).
As I mentioned in a previous post I have been using one of the new MacBook Airs these past few weeks. This baby is slowly becoming my favourite laptop of all times (and I have owned quite a few of these in the past 20 years). The general feeling is that the entire MacBook Pro line will take on elements of the Air line: whether it is the lack of hard drives or the overall thinness and lightness of these beauties.
But there is another rumour making the rounds. This one has to do with a new high-speed connection technology that might replace USB (1, 2 AND 3), Firewire (400 and 800) and who knows what else. A couple of years ago Intel revealed LightPeak. This technology is supposed to transfer data at 10 Gbps (compared to Firewire 400 at 400 Mbps, Firewire 800 at 800 Mbps, USB 2 at 480 Mbps and USB3 at 3.2 Gbps). Some people are speculating that the new MacBook Pro line might already have LightPeak technology onboard upon its release. Others still are somewhat negative about the technology in general since, contrary to the video appearing below in which we are told that LightPeak will use high-speed optical cable technology, it appears that the current "production" version will still be using copper cable, meaning the tech will be "compromised" for now.
Well, only 72 hours or a little more to go before all these speculations can be laid to rest. Somehow, however, we get a sense that if there is a hardware update this week, it won't just be a "speed-bump" of some sort. Stay tuned.
The crime movie genre has seen a rebirth of sorts with, for the past few years, a sub-genre most usually identified with Guy Ritchie's earliest movies: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The guys over at SNL came up with the following fake preview for a "new" movie in that sub-genre. Hilarious stuff.
Having now been on the road for a while, hopping on and off planes, I thought I would share this little telling bit from the 3rd episode of the always hilarious new BBC series "Come Fly With Me".
As I posted earlier, the Angry Birds addiction is still quite prominent out there in the mobile world (as well as on less mobile equipment ever since the introduction of Apple's App Store on the Mac with its own version of that famous franchise's game). So last week we heard of an interesting development: another famous iOS game, apparently the "Top Paid App Of All Times", Doodle Jump, will get a Hollywood tie-in. Universal have announced that the main character of their movie Hop will feature in Doodle Jump as a promotional download.
Now the makers of Angry Birds, Rovio, will release a version of the game set in Rio. Why Rio you ask ? 20th Century Fox will be releasing a movie by that name and some of the characters from that movie will appear in the game as well. Check out the trailer below for more on that.
This new trend of Hollywood-iOS tie ins is interesting. While for now it seems to center on "games to cartoons" connections, it would be interesting to see what other forms such tie-ins might take. Other than that, so long as we get new birds to fling at pigs, who are we to complain ?
