| Tamman Technologies News | - September 2nd, 2009
New at Apple®
A lot has changed at Apple in the past few weeks. Apple, not only releasing hardware upgrades, came out with a few software upgrades as well.
Hardware
First, the most talked about hardware upgrade is the brand new iPhone™ 3G S. The new iPhone 3G S (or sometimes iPhone 3GS) is said to be on average 2 times faster then the 3G iPhone and more than doubles the storage capacity. The iPhone 3G S comes with new features, such as a better 3-megapixle camera, the ability to record video, options to use voice control throughout the phone, a built in compass and many more. (A list of all the new features can be found here.) The new iPhone with all its cool new features and apps is now offered for the low upgrading price of $199 for the 8GB and $299 for the 32GB. Apple launched the very anticipated phone on Friday June 19, 2009.
The second fan favorite of the hardware updates is the new 13” MacBook® Pro. Apple decided to give up on the old 13” MacBook, upgrade it, and let it join the MacBook Pro family. The new 13” Pro comes with a faster processor than the old MacBook, and more options to upgrade memory, and storage space. Along with all the MacBook Pros (15” and 17”) now, the 13” Pro gets the new standard 7-hour lithium-polymer battery. Along with the battery a new standard is also the SD card port that replaces the express card slot. The new 13” Pro’s starting price is set at a low $1199 for the standard and $1499 for the upgraded version. However, the 13” Pro was not the only one to receive upgrades; all of the MacBook’s received processor speed bumps and more options to upgrade memory and storage. All of these new Mac’s are already in Apple stores waiting for us to buy them.
Software
During the Keynote at the WWDC on June 8, 2009, Apple announced the brand new form of OS X entitled Snow Leopard™ or 10.6. The new OS is very closely related to our already favorite, Leopard® OS. Developers took the Leopard OS and refined it making Snow Leopard even more powerful. Some of the new main features include 64bit computing, Open CL, QuickTime X, and Exchange support. The awesome power of 64bit computing allows the computer to utilize the entire amount of ram in your computing exceeding 4GB. This in turn makes the computer run and feel faster than ever. The new QuickTime X gives the users all the locked features of the old QuickTime for free. It lets users create and edit movies, save QuickTime Format movies to or from the web and much more. Microsoft Exchange support is also added to the new Snow Leopard. The new Support lets users who’s mail is hosted through a Microsoft Exchange server use the built in apps such as Apple Mail, Address Book and iCal®, to sync with the Exchange server receiving emails, contacts and calendar dates.
Along with the new OS X, Apple announced a new version of the iPhone software, version 3.0. The new software brings over 100 new features to users on their phone. Some of the new features include the ability to use a landscape keyboard across the major apps, the capability of Internet tethering where carriers provide and Voice Memo abilities. The new software is currently available, as of June 17, 2009, free to all iPhones and a small upgrade fee of $9.95 for iPod® touches.
| Rumors |
New iPod Touch® in September?
After the release of the brand new iPhone 3G S and the new 3.0 software, there are now talks of a new iPod Touch. As it was back in February of this year, while digging through the new iPhone firmware a new iPod model number was found. The model number is entitled iPod3,1. With the current model number being iPod2,1 this can only mean one thing… MacRumors.com suggests that, since the iPod Touch’s have a yearly refresh in September, we should have a new iPod in a couple months. I can’t wait to see the new features it will come with!
| Tamman Tip of the Week |
Remove that Pesky Printer Icon
Unlike the older versions of OS X, in Leopard, when a job is sent to the printer, by default the printer icon appears in the dock and will remain there until it is manually closed. This can be quite annoying to many people, myself included, if you do not like to have your dock cluttered with open applications. The solution is to control click on the printer icon after it appears in your dock and select Auto Quit from the menu. Once Auto Quit is enabled the icon will disappear after the job has been printed.
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