Apple updated their website and online store today with increase in the amount of memory available to the high end iPhone/iPod touch.

For $499 you can now pick up a 16gb iPhone. Many people were suprised this move didn’t come earlier as the iPod Touch was selling with a 16gb model. Now people will wonder why the iPhone doesn’t come in a 32gb option as the iPod touch can now hold that much memory for $499. I’m sure Apple believe that an iPhone model at 32gb for what one can only guess would cost $599 wouldn’t sell as much as the lower, cheaper model.

Both the iPhone and iPod touch updated models are shipping in a 1 - 3 day time frame. So, if you were hoping for a little bit more space on your portable devices, your wish has been granted.

As the first Macbook Air’s started making their way to early purchasers the reviews around the internet seem to be popping up. After reviewing most of them it becomes clear that the Macbook is what most people expected it to be after the announcement at Macworld 2008.

HOW THIN?

The notebook is thin. Extremely thin! Everyone seems impressed with the engineering behind the Macbook Air and Ars Technica provides visual evidence of how thin the Macbook Air is when compared to other Apple Notebooks. With its thinest parts being .16 of an inch the Thin is even described as an impressive iPod:

“One way to look at the MacBook Air is as the largest and most capable iPod in Apple’s line—think of it as an iPod touch Extreme with a built-in keyboard.”- Jacqui Cheng Ars Technica

I personally love my iPod touch, and can imagine how much I’d enjoy having the Macbook Air as a travel companion.

WHAT ABOUT PORTS?

Again, early assumptions were accurate and the lack of multiple USB ports, Firewire, and most other communication points may be a breaking point for many people. Engadget points out that the USB port is even more limiting than originally expected as many external USB devices won’t fit into the space available to insert your USB cable.

While converting cables or extension cables will provide you with a way to hook up your USB devices, it is a bit disappointing that a few extra dollars will need to be spent to get some hardware to work.

WHAT ELSE MAY BUG ME?

Other issues the reviews have with the Macbook Air include a less than expected battery life, difficulty migrating from other Macs without Firewire, and slower speed than other Notebooks. These are all issues for anyone looking to use this as their main computer but something that may be looked over if you’re planning on using it more as a mobile computing device. This fits into line with most reviews conclusions.

Macbook AIR FOR YOU?

Gizmodo explains that the Macbook Air would fit into your life as “secondary” computer, but that role shouldn’t be underestimated.

“It’ll never be my primary, that’s obvious. And while I usually use my old machines as secondaries, I find myself every day more and more unable to resist buying one of these first, and figuring out where it fits into my life second.” - BRIAN LAM GIZMODO

The Macbook Air may be the perfect device to push us towards a complete mobile computing market. With its thin form factor and light weight it is a perfect fit for a secondary computer for quick and simple computing tasks. So if you’re looking for just such a device and its lack of ports and battery options don’t bother you, this may be the perfect notebook.

Our home wireless network has undergone several changes. We adopted early to a pre 802.11n router provided by Belkin. I refer to those as the bad old days where our wireless signal would drop at the slightest hint of traffic. Eventually, we replaced our Belkin router with a new Airport Extreme wireless base station. What a difference it made. Not only did it bring the real wireless experience to our home, but I could also plug in my 500GB usb drive too (and our printer). The only drawback now is my MacBook Pro is an early model and doesn’t have 802.11n capability.

So I finally get the new base station paid off and now there is a new gadget in town, Time Capsule. Somehow, the Apple engineers managed to shoe-horn a “server grade” hard drive into what appears to be the existing Airport Extreme base station. I say appears since you won’t be able to get your hands on one until February. Anyway, would it have been worth the wait to have an integrated device rather than the two (base station and external drive) I have now? Again, it’s hard to say since I can’t compare the two. However, I am leaning towards no.

Foremost is portability. I can take my drive and MacBook Pro (and external drive) with me to work, home, or wherever. You can’t do that with Time Capsule, unless you want to haul around your base station wherever you go, and risk family or roommate mutiny when they can’t connect to the internet while you’re out. Also, if you just plunked down $299 or $499 (which is a pretty good price for a base station and storage), you’re going to want to do more with all that drive space than just backups, especially if you decide a MacBook Air is right for you, and you just can’t be as mobile when all your data is tethered to a base station.

Coming in a close second is bandwidth. Most external drives ship with USB 2.0 as a connection. The USB 2.0 spec has a maximum throughput of 480 MegaBytes per second while 802.11n maximum bandwidth is theoretically 540 Megabits per second. The astute reader will notice that megabytes and megabits are not quite the same. Geeks will know that 8 bits is one byte, meaning that the maximum bandwidth of the 802.11n spec is about 64.3 megabytes per second and all wireless base stations, be Apple or otherwise, will never be anywhere close to the maximum. That means the first time Time machine syncs up your 250GB iMac drive it’s going to take a much longer time than if it were plugged in via USB.

Finally, there is the issue of replacement. Replacing my current external drive would be simple and only involve the cost of a new drive. What happens if when you fill up the storage on time capsule, or if the “server grade” hard drive fails? Either your base station spends some time at the Apple certified repair center or you get the opportunity of getting a new base station.

But you can run time machine using Time Capsule, which you can’t do at the moment with a regular Airport Extreme base station. However, the software that ships with Time Capsule (assuming that doesn’t change) is the same software that ships with the Airport Extreme base station. I would bet that by February, us Airport Extreme owners will also be able to use Time Machine on our drives. Otherwise, it’ll be back to the bad old days of not having the complete wireless experience.

I came across an application that enables the use of your Nintendo Wiimote on your Mac. DarwiinRemote can be downloaded at Sourceforge.net. Its a small application that uses both the motion sensors or the IR sensors to allow you to navigate around OSX as you would with your mouse.

1. Installation
Installation is easy, simple download the file and drag it to your applications folder. You can of course launch the application from the dmg file if you’re not sure you’ll want to keep it on your system.

2. Enable Bluetooth
The Wiimote will communicate with your computer through Bluetooth so make sure you have this enabled. You should be able to do this by selecting the Bluetooth icon on your menu bar and clicking Enable

3. Sync the Wiimote to your Mac
Open DarwiinRemote and push the 1 and 2 buttons on your wiimote simultaneously. This will put your wiimote in discover mode and DarwiinRemote will let you know when its found your wiimote.

If you have problems detecting the wiimote or can’t connect it to your system at all, close DarwiinRemote, open it again, and try to connect the wiimote to the system again. If this does not work. Go to System Preferences and then to Bluetooth. Remove the Wiimote from the device list and then open DarwiinRemote and try again. I had to do this once and it worked perfectly.

4. Using the Wiimote
Once your mac and the wiimote have been synced you should be able to control the pointer as you would with you mouse by enabling mouse. The application gives you the option to do so using the motion control or through IR control. IR works best but you may not have IR receivers setup on your computer. Motion control is a bit jerky but is fun to play around with as the mouse follows the movements you make with your hand.

The Great feature that the DarwiinRemote offers is the ability to pull up Front Row as you would with your Mac Remote Control. Pushing the B button pulls up Front Row and you can navigate around with the arrows and other buttons on the system. B will also return you to your desktop.

Conclusion
Overall, using the wiimote as your mouse can be fun to play with. The process only takes a few minutes and is as simple as clicking a few buttons. The ability to use the remote in place of the Remote Control for Front Row heavily outweighs the ability to use the remote as you would a mouse.

PURCHASED A MACBOOK

A couple weeks ago I purchased my wife a Macbook. She loved using my iMac so much that I needed to get something for her to have as her own. After talking it over with my wife we agreed that she need the basics. She only wanted to be able to browse the web, view photos, and use iMovie to create family movies and memories. I thought that the baseline Macbook with 1.83mhz Intel Core 2 Duo chip and 512mb of RAM would be great for her. She didn’t need a DVD burner as we planned on saving the files on a central home server and could pull them up on my iMac to burn any media that was needed.

We went to the Apple Store and went straight to the Macbooks. I clicked around the Macbooks next to the sign detailing the hardware specs of the base line Macbook for $1099 and it zipped a long just great. We purchased the laptop and took it home. I set it up for my wife but noticed that it was MUCH SLOWER than the machines we quickly tested at the Apple store. Opening Safari sometimes took 10 seconds and every other Universal Application was also slow.

SLOW PERFORMANCE

I searched around the internet and found that many others were also reporting this problem. Some mentioned it was just spotlight indexing your files. I thought this might be the case so I left the machine on over night and in the morning no improvement was noticed. A couple people mentioned that the real problem was the limited 512mb of RAM in the system. I decided I’d test this theory and the next day I returned to the Apple store and purchased 1 gig of RAM for the system. I then tested the system one more time before installing the new RAM. It was still extremely slow.

INSTALLED NEW RAM

I followed the instructions included with the Macbook, unscrewed a slot below the battery and replaced the memory. I booted up OS X and clicked on Safari. It opened before I could finish clicking the icon. I was amazed. The system was running in comparison with my 2ghz iMac and everything that had been extremely slow now responded amazingly fast.

This made me wonder about the Macbooks on display at the Apple store. I returned a few days later and opened System Preferences and About this Mac on the machine. It listed the machine as 1.83ghz Intel Core 2 Dou with 1gig of RAM. They also upgraded the System Memory on their display machines.

THE REAL PURPOSE OF THE $1099 MACBOOK - A LAPTOP PRICED THAT LOW

What this tells me is that buying the Baseline Macbook priced at $1099 is a complete waste of money. With the cost of $150 to upgrade to 1gig of ram it doesn’t make sense to buy that model of the machine at all. The system barely functions at a reasonable speed and the next level up for $1299 includes a faster processor, 1gig of RAM memory, a larger Hard Drive, and a DVD burner.

If you’ve had problems with the performance of your Macbook, try increasing the RAM memory. If you haven’t purchased one yet, don’t even bother looking at the baseline model. It must be their for Apple to say they sell a laptop at that Price point and nothing more as any normal user will need to purchase additional RAM to get a functional computer.