Pic o' the Week: Security!

A woman's Macbook was shot to death at an Isralei airport because security thought it was a bomb. Honestly though, they were just PC fans... More info after the break.

I went inside to check on my bag. I had left it unattended, where they instructed. It was still there so I went back outside.

Moments later a man came outside and introduced himself as the manager on duty. And then, “I’m sorry but we had to blow up your laptop. “

What….all my client case notes and testimony, writing, pictures, music and applications. Years of work. NO!!!! What?? Are you insane?? What were you thinking? THAT’S ALL MY WORK!?

After much yelling, crying and frantic phone dialing (don’t be alarmed if I called you repeatedly this morning), he took me outside to see the wreckage. It turned out it hadn’t been quite blown up, but rather shot through with three bullets. We were able to extract the hard drive, seemingly unscaved. Thank goodness

WWDC 09 Coverage!

NEW 15-inch MacBook Pro

- 7 hours of battery life
- Non-replaceable lithium polymer battery
- SD slot
- You can get up to 3.06 GHz Dual Core 6MB Level 2 Cache
- Up to 8GB of memory
- 500GB hard drive. Or 256GB SSD
- $1699 for the introductory 15-inch MacBook Pro
- Shipping today

13-inch MacBook Pro

- The 13-inch also has the same built-in battery (non-removable). And the new display.
- SD Card slot too
- Up to 8GB
- Also a 500GB hard drive or 256GB SSD
- FireWire 800
- $1199

MacBook Air

- $1499 for base Air.
- $1799 with a 256GB SSD. $700 cheaper than before.
All meetsthe stringent EP Gold standard

OS X Snow Leopard

- 45% faster
- Recover 6GB of HDD Space after install
- 3D Rendering for the dock
- Crash resistance
- 64-bit JavaScript performance up by 50%
- New UI for Quicktime
- Many new features
- Safari is claimed to be the fastest browser out!
- Quicktime has been built from the ground up

- SL can run all major Mac Apps at 64bit
- No threads, it Grand Central Dispatch
- Wants to use this power for everything, OpenCl
- Exchange support is now built into Mail, iCal and Address book
- Free exchange support for Mac users only
- SL available on all Intel Macs, past and present
- Snow Leopard will only cost $29, $49 Family Pack
- Available in September

iPhone OS 3.0

- 100+ new features
- Cut, copy and paste for all apps… finally…
- MMS gets announced… finally… well, sometime this summer…
- Spotlight. You can search calendars, music, notes, etc…
- Rent and Buy movies over 3G
o Supports iTunes U
- Tethering
o This works on Macs or PCs, over USB or Bluetooth
- Safari
- The Old OS ran the bench in 126 seconds. JavaScript is now almost 3 times faster
- Support for HTTP streaming audio and video. Bitrate and data quality adjust to connection speed
- Better language support, 30+
- Find My iPhone feature = service available to Mobile Me customers
- Through mobileme, any web browser will show you, on a map, where your phone is.
o Features a remote wipe, too
- Peer to peer support

Games/Apps

- Asphalt 5 - You race 27 licensed cars and 4 motorcycles “around the world”


o You can play your iTunes music in-game, too
- Airstrip Technologies - They allow healthcare providers to monitor information on mobiles


- ScrollMotion – does stuff with digital books
o There are 50 major magazines, 170 daily newspapers and 1 million books on the app store
- TomTom - This is the first navigational turn-by-turn on the app store. They’re bringing both applications and accessory integration to the iPhone
- ngmoco:) - Star Defense is a tower defense game
o out now @ $5.99


- PASCO – Spark - people can connect PASCO sensors to computers to record/input data
o The Spark app should drop this Fall
- zipcar – is the leading car borrowing service – you can find a list of available cars nearby for rent
o comes with a car horn and unlock function, too
- Line 6 and Planet Waves – Chord Master - the app connects the iPhone to an amp and to a guitar and adds a load of amp effects
o Demonstration was messed up, so not much info
o You can change your string’s tuning through the app and not in the physical world!

June 17th - iPhone OS 3.0 will be free for all iPhone customers. $9.95 for iPod touch.

iPhone 3GS (Speed)

- Launching messaging is 2.1x faster, loading SimCity is 2.4x faster, viewing Excel 3.6x faster, loading NY Times 2.9x faster
- SunSpider JavaScript graph - iPhone 2.0 126 seconds. 3G 43 seconds. 3GS 15 seconds
- The 3GS now supports OpenGL|ES. It also supports 7.2 Mbps HSDPA!
- The new 3GS includes a 3MP autofocus camera.
o Everything about the camera has been improved
- We can now capture video!
o 30FPS VGA with auto focus, auto white balance and auto exposure
o Can share video, too
- Voice Control – calling people, play album, etc…
o Ask “What’s Playing Now?”


- Built-in digital compass
- Built-in support for Nike+
- Hardware Encryption
- Better battery life
o The 3G got 6hrs on Wi-Fi, 7 on Video, 24 on Audio, 10 on 2G talk and 5 on 3G talk. 3gS gets 9 on Wi-Fi, 10 on video, 30 on audio, 12 on 2g talk and 5 on 3g talk
- No front camera :(


iPhone 3GS: $199 16GB version, $299 32GB version June, 19th (available in 80+ countries by the 26th)

iPhone 3G (8GB) will stay in the market for $99, starting today!

Poor Problem Solving Skills can ruin a MacBook Air

I had to grab this from Teknogazm

Poor Problem Solving Skills can ruin a MacBook Air