Aside from mini notebooks, most notebooks are heavy and we all lived with that. Apple didn’t leave it at that, instead they came up with an innovative solution to solve that problem, by carving each new notebooks from a single piece of aluminum.

This not only reduces faults and breakdowns, but reduces the weight of the notebooks as they are not constructed from different pieces of metal.

The click button on the trackpad was also removed and trackpad widened leaving more room for multitouch gestures like swiping, pinching, rotating etc. The whole trackpad is a click button by the way (2 fingers for right click).

Here’s some pictures of the new slimmer Macbook Pro 15” to ogle at, enjoy.

Hot from the stove! Apple have refreshed their line of iPods! You can find out about the new iPod Nano 4G, iPod Classics and iPod Touch from Apple’s website. Apart from the new iPods, iTunes 8.0 is out. The new firmware for iPhone / iPod Touch, 2.1, which is said to fix major bugs will be released on September 12 with some new features including the Genius which you can read about below.

The 2.1 update fixes bugs, and reduces the number of dropped calls experienced by iPhone users with the 2.0 software. It also signifcantly improve the battery life, less crashes, and provides “dramatically faster” backups to iTunes (what a relieve). New performance enhancements have also been made.

Impressive new feature(s)

Genius

What I am impressed about the new iPods is the – Genius feature. Apple took shuffling songs to a whole new level;

When listening to a song you like and you want to listen to more songs like that, click on Genius, your iPod will automatically create a new playlist for you with a selection of songs you might like from your library.To generate a new playlist just click refresh. What a revolutionary new way of listening to music other than the old and tired “shuffle” mode! Genius indeed.

Genius also applies to the new iPod Classics, iPod Touch / iPhone running the latest firmware and iTunes 8.0.

Shuffle

To shuffle to a song, shake your iPod!

Accelerometer for iPod Nano

Now you’re able to view Cover Flow and Movies in landscape mode, just tilt your iPod and the screen will automatically rotate to fit the landscape screen, just like the iPhone and iPod Touch.

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Very awesome, wonder if I should get one of those iPod Nano 4G.

I have joined Melly and hopped onto the Mac bandwagon, please pardon me if some of these applications doesn’t work on PC. Here goes:

1) MobileMe, by Apple

MobileMe is Mac & PC friendly! If you have several computers at home, eg. 1 desktop computer, 1 laptop to work on the go, 1 iPhone or iPod Touch, you definitely need your data to be synced across all devices, and nothing does it best like MobileMe. MobileMe not only syncs but pushes data from your calendar, contacts, emails, bookmarks and more to all your devices.

If you like push technology and if you’re running a small business run by 2 person for example, it’s not practical to pay a hefty price monthly for Microsoft Exchange or Blackberry in my opinion. MobileMe only costs US$99/year for Single User and US$149/year for Family Pack to enable you to have push email, calendar and contacts to your iPhone and your other machines.

You will also get a full suite of web applications allowing you to manage your emails, calendars, contacts, photos and files. The web app really looks and works like a desktop application which is really an awesome experience.

2) Money, by Jumsoft

Money lets you keep track of your earnings and expenses, invoices and bills. What I really like about this native application is that it really just gives me what I need without being bloated with extra features that I don’t need. Very easy to use, once installed it gets you up and running in no time.

This application lets me see my overall finance situation, income, my invoices (invoiced, uninvoiced, overdue), and expenses all at a glance. If you find creating invoices day to day a chore, you can also create invoices within this application, but unfortunately you can’t customize the look of your invoices like you want them to although you can select from a few pre-designed templates.

But that’s besides the point, the ultimate purpose using this application is such that I can make financial decisions very quickly, keeping track of invoices sent to clients and filing income taxes at the end of the year. There is also a sync feature to backup and revert your data to MobileMe, so that you can see exactly the same data on different computers.

Money costs US$39 to own the program.

3) Things, by Cultured Code

In order to reduce stress, you need all your tasks, big or small, immediate or future, to be recorded instead of having them hanging around your head. Things lets you do just that. It comes with a desktop and iPhone app available at the iTunes store. You can sync both apps with both platforms wirelessly. This to-do list application lets you create tasks which you can file under “Today” (tasks you need to complete today), “Scheduled (tasks you need to complete in the future)”, “Someday (tasks you might want to consider completing) and “Next (all the task you need to complete after Today’s task, including scheduled tasks). You can even create folders under “Projects” where you can list individual tasks under each of your projects, be it your clients projects, personal projects, or even shopping lists!

You have to try using it to get the flow going, it really does makes me more productive and stress relieved especially when I have a tad too many things to handle at once. Never underestimate the act of ticking off your tasks as “done” each time you complete them, it does makes me feel more accomplished of all the things I have at hand.

Things is now available as a free beta download for your desktop, it’s still undergoing development and once it’s done you’ll have to download the full program at a US$49. You can get US$10 discount if you sign up for their newsletter now. The iPhone app is available at the iTunes store at US$9.99.

4) Evernote

This free notes taking application, Evernote, stores all your notes in the “cloud” which means you can access your notes via a web interface, free desktop application or the iPhone available for free download via iTunes. Evernote is Mac & PC compatible. You can take regular text notes which you can format the text freely using the interface on any platform, take photo notes using either your iSight/Webcam/iPhone Camera, or voice notes using your iPhone’s built in microphone. Evernote also works on Windows Mobile devices.

Notes created or edited will be synced throughout all your devices which is a very important aspect. You can also create multiple so called “Notebooks” to sort your notes into different categories.

Evernote gives you 40MB of monthly upload allowance. You can pay US$5/Month or US$45/Year to go Premium and get 500MB of monthly upload allowance.

Hot off the stoves, Apple had just released it’s new line of iMacs, processor speed now at a whopping 3.06GHz!! Released in the U.S. and might probably take a few days or weeks to ship to Singapore, makes us just want to buy it!

Here’s the specs to make you drool (source from AppleInsider):

The new 20-inch 2.4 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,199 (US), includes:

• 20-inch widescreen LCD display
• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 1GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
• 250GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive® with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB GDDR3 memory
• built-in iSight video camera
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

The new 20-inch 2.66 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,499 (US), includes:

• 20-inch widescreen LCD display
• 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory
• built-in iSight video camera
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

The new 24-inch 2.8 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,799 (US), includes:

• 24-inch widescreen LCD display
• 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory
• built-in iSight video camera
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

The new 24-inch 3.06 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $2,199 (US), includes:

• 24-inch widescreen LCD display
• 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
• 500GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB GDDR3 memory
• built-in iSight video camera
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

Check out Hi-ReS! interview by Apple. Hi-ReS!, founded by Florian Schmitt and Alexandra Jugovic, his wife and creative partner in 1999 and recently acquired by Syzygy Group, builds its intriguingly imperfect, immersive experiences with the help of Mac applications such as Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut Studio, Logic, and Autodesk Maya. â??The Mac puts everything in one place,â? says Hi-ReS! Creative Director Florian Schmitt. He also mentioned that for the first time they’re able to do anything anywhere with the new line of Macbook Pro. Apparently the new powerful line of Macbook Pros are capable of being a substitute for desktop machines. Find out more about their creative processes.