Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like all those whispers were true — the “Android-based” nook is alive and well, and it’s calling itself the planet’s “most advanced e-book reader.” Measuring 7.7- x 4.9- x 0.5-inches and weighing 11.2 ounces, the device includes a top e-ink display from Vizplex and a color touchscreen (3.5-inches) below, which supports one-touch control and swipe-to-browse books with full-color covers. The rechargeable battery takes 3.5 hours to go from zero to full if using a wall outlet, and B&N claims that it’ll last for up to ten days if you flick the wireless to “off.” Speaking of which, inbuilt WiFi (802.11b/g) and AT&T 3G is included, not to mention 2GB of internal storage, a microSD expansion slot, MP3 player, built-in mono speaker, 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, a micro USB port and support for EPUB, PDF and MP3. The nook also supports bookmarking, making notes, and highlighting passages, and the ‘LendMe’ feature allows users to lend books for up to a fortnight at a time to other e-readers, cellphones or computers.

B&N also tells us that you can pick up where you left off (with markings and highlights in tact) on your iPhone or BlackBerry using its free eReader software, which just so happens to be the same app that allows sharing to iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, PC or Mac. As expected, the company will also let you sample ebooks before you buy, and you’ll enjoy free WiFi each and every time you sashay into a Barnes & Noble retail location. It’s available to pre-order as we speak for $259, with initial shipments expected to happen at the end of November. Introductory video is after the break, along with a few highlights about accessories and features.

Update: Aw snap, B&N just yanked everything related to nook from its website. Thankfully for you, everything you’d ever need to know is right here.

Update 2: Looks like it’s back! Though, the landing page itself still seems down. Hurray for backdoors!

Update 3: Be sure to check out our live reveal coverage and our hands-on images / video!

Continue reading Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader leaks a bit early: $259, pre-orders are live (video)

Filed under: Displays

Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader leaks a bit early: $259, pre-orders are live (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember that crazy, dual-screened Barnes & Noble Nook reader we scooped the hell out of a while back? Well, it’s online-official, with Wi-Fi and 3G, person-to-person lending and expandable memory. Oh, and it ships 11/30. UPDATE: Site’s pulled.

To be clear, this is the same device we saw before—a smallish (7.7 x 4.9 x .5, it turns out) e-reader with two screens, a 6-inch E ink display up top for displaying book text, and a 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD down below for navigation.

Connectivity comes by way of free AT&T 3G as well as 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, while storage duties fall to the 2GB of internal memory, as well as an microSD expansion slot. Barnes & Noble claims charge time of 3.5 hours—by microUSB, thankfully—which’ll let you read for “up to ten days,” which is a curiously indirect way of describing battery life, and doesn’t really say much about what “reading” means. With constant LCD use? Occasional? None? Audio playback seems limited to MP3s, with a 3.5mm headphones jack taking care of output. Say what you will about the design, but you can’t fault B&N on ports.

Naturally, the main content source is the B&N ebook store, which has a reasonable—though not spectacular—selection of magazines and newspapers too. What the Nook has that other B&N-compatible readers don’t, though, is sharing. As with Amazon’s Kindle iPhone app, the Barnes & Noble’s reader can be synced with the company’s various mobile apps. Even better is the user to user sharing, which sounds an awful lot like the Zune’s old “Squirting” feature, which let people sharing DRM-wrapped songs for a limited time. That said, the sharing terms are pretty generous:

Share favorite eBooks with your friends, family, or book club. Most eBooks can be lent for up to 14 days at a time. Just choose the book you want to share, then send it to your friend’s reader, cell phone, or computer.

Avid readers can easily plow through all kinds of books in 14 days, so this is a pretty sweet deal.

And in a deprecating nod to the Kindle’s notorious durability issues, Barnes & Noble is pushing extended warranties right out of the gate: a $70 protection plan stretches the stock warranty to two years, and throws in accidental damage coverage, meaning you don’t have to worry too much about pulling a Matt, which given that this thing has two freakin’ screens, is a very real worry.

So let’s just get this out of the way. “Hi, I’m Kate, and this is my Nook!” Ha. Ok!

Disregarding my inner 12-year-old for a second, the above video does give a better sense of how the reader’s control scheme works than words ever good, but I’ll give it a go anyway: the only hardware buttons you’ll really use are the right and left page switchers. The rest, from book library navigation to settings menus to book sharing, is managed through a separate menu system on the much more responsive (though from the looks of it, kinda jerky) color LCD. One one hand it’s a clever workaround for E Ink’s horrendously slow refresh rate; on the other, it’s kind of hilarious. I mean, really? [B&N]

Preorders are live on B&N’s site, and units should hit mailboxes on November 30th. [Last Week’s Exclusive First Look]

UPDATE: Err, looks like B&N’s web guys jumped the gun a little bit, and they’ve pulled the site. But ha, not soon enough. Eyes, feast:

What, you thought Apple would neglect the poor iMac with today’s refresh? The company updated its perennial favorite all-in-one desktop today, with 21.5-inch and 27-inch 16:9 backlit displays (1,920 x 1,080 and 2,560 x 1,440 resolutions, respectively), with 178-degree viewing angles. The systems ship with the Apple wireless keyboard and the brand new Magic Mouse.

The models also feature an i-Sight camera, four USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1, a bu8ilt-in SD card slot, and Gigabit Ethernet.

The 21.5-inch 3.06 GHz model runs $1,199 for 500GB of storage. You can bump that up to 1TB and ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics for $1,499. The 27-incher starts at $1,699 with a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. At $1,999, you get a 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5 quad-core processor/ The price bump also upgrades the ATI Radeon HD 4670 discrete graphics to ATI Radeon HD 4850.

The new iMacs are available today.

Slow pans. Deliberate zooms. White background. Yes, it’s another all too brief sit down with Apple’s chief designer Jonathan Ive — this time talking about the company’s freshly revised iMacs. Among other things, Ive seems to be particularly keen on how well that those big new 16:9 displays have been integrated into the design, noting that “it’s just display, and then no display.” Indeed. Head on past the break to check it out for yourself.

Continue reading Apple’s Jony Ive waxes eloquently about new iMacs on video

Filed under: Desktops

Apple’s Jony Ive waxes eloquently about new iMacs on video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s Remote — which it stopped throwing in with its MacBook Pro machines awhile back — has also seen a refresh today, ditching the iconic glossy white vibe now associated with the company’s lower-end consumer machines and instead donning an all-aluminum coat to match the Mac Pro, MacBook and MacBook Pro range. As always, it’s designed to control your iPod, iPhone or Mac from afar, with play / pause, menu, volume and track skip buttons at the ready. If you’re looking to use it with your iPod or iPhone, you’ll need an iPod Universal Dock ($49) and a device with a dock connector; if you’re using it with your Mac, you’ll need a compatible machine introduced in 2005 or later with an integrated IR receiver. It’ll ship in two to four weeks for $19.

Filed under: Peripherals

Apple updates $19 Remote, predictably coats it in aluminum originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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