Hasta La Gadget!

Vietnam, previously known for its awesome food and friendly populace, has recently become the go-to country for Apple hardware leaks. And these aren’t your usual, suspicious shaky-cam leaks, either. The photos and video coming out of the Tinhte.com news site are sharp, comprehensive and professional. As iFixit CEO and friend of Gadget Lab Kyle Wiens Tweeted: “Man, these Vietnamese leakers are schooling everyone in the quality photo department.”

After that iPhone 4G video comes the new MacBook. The white plastic unibody MacBook will get a processor speed bump from 2.26GHz to 2.4GHz and the current NVIDIA GeForce 9400M will be replaced with the NVIDIA GeForce 320M, putting it almost on a level with the newly updated aluminum MacBook Pro. It also appears to come with the new fray-free MagSafe connector

The news in this story isn’t that the MacBook is getting an update, but that the whole machine has leaked out in its final, store-ready packaging. What’s going on at Apple? Where’s that famous secrecy? And why is this all happening in Vietnam?

Rò rỉ MacBook nhựa đời mới [Tinhte via Twitter]

Google cache of page

See Also:

• Video: 4th-Gen iPhone ‘Found’ in Vietnam, Contains A4 iPad Chip …

A wireless speaker in every room? Yes please. Power-bricks, cables and Wi-Fi dongles cluttering up the place? No thanks. What about a speaker with built-in LED lamps that screws into your existing lighting fixtures and receives music wirelessly from almost any source. Tell me more!

MusicLites are a joint venture between Osram, the lightbulb people, and Artison, maker of satellite speakers, subwoofers and soundbars. Inside the large package you’ll find the LEDs, a 70mm 25-watt speaker, an amplifier and a 2.4 GHz wireless transceiver (operating on its own network, not your Wi-Fi).

The signals come from either a USB dongle, a 30-pin iPhone dock dongle or an analog RCA adapter plugged into the sound-source. The genius is that everything is neatly packaged and can sit unnoticed in a ceiling socket whilst still providing the light of a 65-watt incandescent bulb. In theory, these units should use less power than a standard bulb.

If the price is right when these go on sale in the fall, I’m totally sold. I hate cables and I like sound in every room. The only problem I can see is that you’d need to have the light on to listen to music, and a bright overhead bulb is hardly the thing for romantic evenings in. And even if there is a switch inside the unit for killing the lights, the midget market will be immediately excluded.

While you wait for the MusicLites to go on sale, check out the pricey but effective Klipsch LightSpeakers, which Wired recently reviewed.

Artison MusicLites [Osram via Oh Gizmo]

OSRAM SYLVANIA and ARTISON Launch MusicLites [PR Newswire]

As expected, the official-looking Windows Phone 7 OS ROM leaked over the weekend is already yielding results. Pictured above is an image extracted from the “oemavatar.cab.” Now that could be a generic Windows Phone 7 image or it could be the HTC Mondrian already seen referenced by the 100MB file. The kids at XDA-Developers have also pieced together specs from an ongoing analysis of the registry and RGU files. So far they’ve spotted references to a 4.3-inch WVGA (480×800) display from Optrex and a 1.3GHz QSD8650A/B Snapdragon from Qualcomm — a chipset, you might recall, supporting multi-mode UMTS and CDMA 3G connectivity. It’s also packing a digital compass but seems to lack a keyboard. Mind you, none of this is absolute but it’s very very intriguing.

[Thanks, Andrew]

HTC Mondrian with 1.3GHz Snapdragon detailed in leaked Windows Phone 7 ROM? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 05:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s out, Samsung’s 10 megapixel EX1 (aka, TL500) with 3-inch articulating AMOLED display was just pushed out for retail in its Korean homeland. For 599,000KRW or about $400, you get a F1.8 24mm ultra-wide lens, 1/1.7-inch CCD, refined DRIMeIII imaging processor, dual image stabilization, and ISO 3200 max sensitivity (at full resolution) that should combine to deliver decent shots (for a compact) in low-light conditions without using a flash. As Samsung’s flagship compact it also supports RAW with shutter‑priority, aperture‑priority and full-manual shooting modes. Unfortunately, H.264 video is limited to 640×480 pixels at 30fps. Fortunately, an optional optical viewfinder can be fitted to the hot shoe in case the AMOLED display fails to hold up under direct sunlight — a very real possibility since there’s no mention of Samsung’s “Super AMOLED” anywhere in the press release. Can’t wait to see the reviews on this pup.

Samsung’s EX1 / TL500 flagship compact articulates ‘release’ in Korean originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 05:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ThinkTank, the master of shifting photo-gear, is better known for its TARDIS-like airline carry-on cases than for smaller bags. The new Retrospective series may change that.

The Retrospective bags are stealth bags. The “pinestone” colored bags are especially normal-looking, fashioned from a mottled gray fabric that manages not to scream out its camera-holding nature, although the even the black ones are less conspicuous than ThinkTank’s own Urban Disguise series (which are in fact camera bags disguised as camera bags).

The soft-sided shoulder bags come in three sizes and will hold a big DSLR body and lens along with space for a few more lenses. Because they are soft, there is a lot more flexibility as to how you cram in your gear. The layout, though, makes quick lens-changes pretty easy: the lenses are kept upright for grabbing quickly.

The bit I like most, though, is the pair of expandable nylon pockets on each end. These are not padded, and they are big enough to slide in a strobe or compact camera where they can be secured by a Velcro flap. You also get either one or two DSLR body-sized pockets on the front, depending on the model you buy

The main section, too, is Velcro’d closed, but you can silence the ripping sound with some covering flaps. This is a fairly common feature these days, also found in Crumpler bags.

There are also a pair of lens-changer bags, so you can carry you SLR on a strap and just carry the spare lenses over your shoulder. These have a bunch of small accessory pockets, too.

These days I keep most of my kit in a Kata backpack or in separate pouches ready to be thrown into any old bag. The expandable nature of these bags, though, has got me considering yet another addition to my already embarrassingly large bag collection.

ThinkTank Retrospective 20 [ThinkTank. Thanks, Mr.Hobby!]

See Also:

• Flash Flood: ThinkTank Rain Cover For Hydrophobic Shutterbugs …
• Hands On: Kata 3N1 Camera Backpack
• First Look: New Lowepro Bags Big Enough To Carry A Baby
• Hands On With Lowepro's 'Stealth' Camera Bag