Hasta La Gadget!

We just received this shot of what is purportedly the inside of the new MacBook Air. Contrary to popular belief, the machine appears to be another 13.3-incher, with the primary modification being extra room for battery cells and apparently no room for a hard drive. Of course, this is only one SKU, so who knows what else Apple has in store. From what we can tell from the photo, Apple is taking its unibody styling and construction and running with it here, not that the MacBook Air was too far off from the MacBook Pro to begin with. The telltale sign is the black hinge, though it also appears Apple has done away with the drop-down side ports.

Based on our own professional squinting ability, there are USB plugs on the left and right sides, Mini DisplayPort and an SD card reader on the left, and a power plug on the right. Of course, since the screw holes are facing us, we’re probably looking at this from the bottom, so flip all of those around if you want to imagine using this thing (because, of course, the power plug will be on the Apple-standard left side). We also have it on good authority that the rest of the machine has been restyled in modern unibody style, including the large single mouse button, but that the screen is still like the current MacBook Air, instead of the edge-to-edge glass with black edges. Also, it’s apparently running the same Core 2 Duo SL9400 processor of the current generation MacBook Air — possibly further proof that this is a very early prototype (our source says the model dates back to at least April). We’re working on getting more images and information, but for now at least two things seem (relatively) clear: Apple hasn’t forgotten about the MacBook Air, and 13.3-inches isn’t going out of style just yet. Hopefully we’ll know for certain next week!

[Thanks, anonymous]

Is this the new MacBook Air? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Oct 2010 01:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ah, the age old alphabetical dessert guessing game. Pretty soon we’ll have more future Android versions named than existing ones on the market. And you know what? That’s okay, because we’re hungry. Apparently the President of ARM, Tudor Brown, spilled the vanilla beans to Elizabeth Woyke of Forbes, saying that Android 4.0 will be called “Ice Cream,” and while it seems like a bit of an obvious choice for an “I” dessert, that’s never stopped Google’s crack naming crew before. (Donut, anybody?) Somehow we get the feeling that Google spends a lot less time thinking about potential names for desserts than we do, and that’s alright: they’ve got a lot of OS work to do. Us? We just have to whine about Android fragmentation for an hour or so a week on the podcast. Hardly a full load.

Android ‘Ice Cream’ the sweet toothed followup to Honeycomb? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the first BlackBerry to ship with BB OS 6, and it’s the first to boast both a touchpanel and a conventional slide-out QWERTY. But is it capable of standing up to the rest of today’s modern smartphones? We definitely had a few bones to pick with RIM’s latest flagship device when we reviewed it a few month’s back, but if you’re a regular, you’ll know that this segment isn’t about us — it’s about you, particularly if you own a Torch. Are you satisfied with the revised OS? Happy with the touchscreen response? Would you have bumped the screen resolution? Changed the keyboard in any way? Thrown a CDMA module in for Sprint / Verizon support? RIM’s betting quite a bit on this new operating system (and this new design), so feel free to sound off in comments below with ideas on how you’d change things for version two dot oh. Keep it classy, though — cool?

How would you change RIM’s BlackBerry Torch? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look out, Shuttle — CyberPower’s getting all up in your territory with its new LAN Party EVO series. Introduced today, this foursome of minuscule monsters relies on mITX and mATX motherboards and plenty of high-end internals to deliver solid gaming performance in a desktop that’s at least somewhat portable. The Party EVO Mini is wrapped in a Silverstone SG-07B enclosure, while the Xtreme, Commander, and Ultra tout In-Win’s Dragonslayer. Aside from integrating its Max Airflow Package to keep things a couple of notches below “Molten Lava,” the whole crew is equipped with a 64-bit copy of Windows 7, a three-year warranty and free lifetime phone support. As for specs, the Mini ($1,079) gets a Core i7-870 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU and a 1TB HDD, while the Xtreme ($799) steps down (oddly enough) to a Core i5-760 and an HD 5670 on the graphics front. The Commander ($999) includes a Core i7-950, 6GB of DDR3 RAM and NVIDIA’s GeForce GTS 450 (1GB), and finally, the Ultra ($759) branches out with an AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, ATI’s Radeon HD 5670 GPU (1GB) and a full terabyte of hard drive space. So, which is going to be, buster?

Continue reading CyberPower gets diminutive with LAN Party EVO SFF desktop family

CyberPower gets diminutive with LAN Party EVO SFF desktop family originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week’s apps include a ring tone creator that uses MP3s from your library and a puzzle game where you help trains get to the station.

Originally posted at The Download Blog