Nothing New Outside, but Inside?

       Nothing New Outside, but Inside?

By Michael Van Hoesen

        On Tuesday May 11th, Apple released their newest version of the Mac Book Pro family. Over time their laptop lines have encountered many changes. Apple first started with the Power Books all the way from the beginning of their laptops. Then the iBook line was introduced. They then when through iBook and Power Book G3 and G4.
         The first is up to a ten hour battery life. The previous generation of Mac Book's had up to six hours of battery life. I think that the reason for this push is because Apple wants the Mac Book Pros to have similar battery to the iPad so consumers spend over $1000 rather than just $500.
      The next important upgrade on these computers  are the next generation of NVIDIA graphics. We first heard of NVIDIA on Tuesday October 14th, 2008 when Apple announced the new Mac Book. As the story goes, NVIDIA came to Apple very excited about creating an amazing graphics chip for desktops, NOT LAPTOPS. Apple, being very optimistic, helped them design an amazing, energy efficient, and very stable graphics chip. The biggest upgrade by far with these new computers is the graphics chip. Apple has now upgraded from Intel Core Duo's to Intel i7 and i5. These processors are so much faster than the Intel Core Duo's. They make the laptops even faster than they were before, even though they were already faster than the speed of light!
      Then, they redesigned their laptop brands completely. They got rid of the iBook brand and the Power Book brand and replaced them with the Mac Book and Mac Book Pro. The Mac Book Pros were always full metal, while the Mac Books were just black and white plastic.
In 2008,  Apple redesigned their Mac Book brand completely. They scrapped the plastic and went with an all metal unibody enclosure. This meant that instead of having many small parts that are very easy to break, they only had one large part that was very sturdy and light weight.
        They also redesigned the touchpad. Instead of having just you average track pad and button click, they turned the track pad into one complete glass structure, and now the whole track pad is the button. The next year, they combined the Mac Book and Mac Book Pro lines.
       They then just recently announced another upgrade to the Mac Book Pro computers. This upgrade has nothing to do with the outside of the machine, it is all internal. There were three main upgrades in this generation.
   
       

Macbook UNIBODY

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Knowledge Navigator

The iPad and how it has Revolutionized the Tablet PC World

Why the iPad is the FIRST Revolutionary Tablet

By Michael Van Hoesen

       The iPad has changed the tablet PC era in so many ways. As early as 2004 many tablets were already on the market. The best one at that time in my opinion, was the Lenovo X6 Tablet. There is a major difference between the iPad and that Lenovo X6 Tablet though. The X6 tablet still feels like you are using a regular computer, but the iPad is devoted to touch screen.  Essentially, the iPad is just a big piece of touch screen glass. 
      The iPad was first shown off in a Keynote at the Yuna Buena Arts Center in California on Wednesday, January 27th 2010. There, Steve Jobs CEO of Apple gave on a guided tour of the iPad. The iPad had many features that people were looking for. Their main excitement, iBooks.
       iBooks is the iPad's version of Kindle. What is different about the iPad is that it is color. I have a Kindle, and it is great for reading in the daytime, but it would always drive me crazy when I would try to read it in the dark because it did not have a backlight. On the other hand, the iPad has a full color display. The other thing great about iBooks is that because the iPad is a full touch screen, you can actually turn the pages with your hand. The iPad in fact has crushed Kindle sales. 
      There has been some controversy as to if keeping the iPad on an iPhone related operating system was a good idea. In my opinion, they should have just put on a fully fledged version of Mac OSX, but I can see why they kept iPhone software on. 

• #1: The Price. The iPad has the Apple A4 chip for its processor which clocks in at about 1 GHz (about half the speed of a relatively good computer). They probably wouldn't be able to run Mac OSX on it without it being extremely slow, but they wanted to keep the price under $500, so they stuck with A4. 
• #2: App Store. The App Store has been a huge success. So far, they have sold over 3 billion apps, and the App Store has only been around for two and a half years! Why not make money off the iPad? This is also great for developers because it gives them the chance to develop really cool games for the iPad. 
• #3: Compatibility: Apple wants the iPad to appeal to people of all ages, especially the elderly. The iPod Touch and iPhone software is a lot easier to understand than Mac OSX. If you have an iPod Touch or iPhone, then you already know how to use the iPad. 

      An Apple Tablet had been rumored for many years before the iPad was introduced. In fact, in 1987 Apple made a video of an imaginary device called the Knowledge Navigator. It was what they thought the future would hold for them. So I have one more question for you, will the iPad blend?