Hasta La Gadget!

First up on the slate of today’s announcements at Apple’s Back to the Mac event: iLife ’11. The suite contains the usual cast of applications, including iMovie, iPhoto, and Garageband.

The new version of iPhoto offers a number of enhancements, including a “live” full screen, enhancements to Facebook integration, and easier photo e-mailing. The software is more dynamic than in previous versions, including upgrades to slideshows and Places. According to Steve Jobs, two million books a year are printed using the existing iPhoto software.

iMovie ’11, meanwhile, features improvements to audio editing, new one-step special effects, and the ability to create movie trailers from within the application. The application promises to make formerly complex editing possible in just a few mouse clicks. It also features built-in facial detection and keyword filters for editing. The application ships with a number of included music scores. Once edited, the application lets users share movies via Facebook and e-mail.

The latest version of Apple’s music creation software GarageBand, which features updates to timing and rhythm (including the new features Groove Matching and FlexTime) and a number of new instrument options and guitar amps.

iLife ’11 will ship free on new Macs and will run $49 for existing users.

Okay, we’re maybe jumping the gun here–there’s no little blue and white checkmark next to his name, but TechCrunch seems pretty confident that @arubin is, in fact, Andy Rubin, Google’s VP of Engineering and the head of Android, having “confirmed with a couple of people in the know” that it is indeed him.

The fascinating thing, however, isn’t the fact that Rubin is on Twitter–there are plenty of execs and other prominent folk on the micro-blogging site. Rather, it’s the fact that the former Danger CEO used his first tweet to take a jab at Steve Jobs, who, as mentioned before, crashed an Apple earnings meeting to say some mean things about Google’s Android and all of this talk of software openness.

Rubin’s tweet is as follows,

the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make

Our lead mobile analyst Sascha Segan has graciously agreed to translate the above geek speak for the rest of us,

Rubin’s tweet lists the commands needed to start compiling a copy of Android on your home Linux machine. He’s emphasizing that anyone can develop for, hack, and even create their own version of Android. The irony, of course, is that Jobs would probably consider that a negative – Apple likes the uniformity of iOS. Rubin’s declaration of openness also overlooks that some consumers don’t have the freedom to hack their retail devices because of choices made by their wireless carriers and mobile-phone manufacturers.

Rubin hasn’t added anything since that first tweet posted about seven hours ago. We don’t mind. So far he’s battling 1,000.

There’s something about the idea of Steve Jobs just “dropping by” on an Apple earnings call that I really appreciate. As though the multi-billionaire world-famous executive just sort of crashed the party because he had a few things that he really wanted to get off his chest.

What makes the whole Jobs’s appearance on last night’s Apple call really strange is the fact that the Apple chief is notorious for not really do doing a heck of a lot of talking outside of choreographed keynotes and the occasional ill-advised e-mail to an Apple customer or irate journalist.

“Hi, everybody,” Jobs told the press, apparently just sort of crashing the event. “As most of you know, I usually don’t participate in Apple earnings calls, since you’re in such capable hands with Peter [Oppenheimer] and Tim [Cook]. But I just couldn’t help dropping by for our first $20 billion quarter. I would like to chat about a few things, and stay for the rest of the Q&A, if that’s all right.”

I mean, um, I guess it’s all right, if you think it’s all right, Steve.

If you’ve been watching rumors of a possible touch-screen iMac and just don’t want to wait to see if they turn out to be real, the PadDock is here now and gives your iPad a stand that makes it look and feel like an iMac. Just mount your iPad into the PadDock and you get a swivel-tilt stand that looks like it was designed by Apple, charges your ipad while it’s in the dock, and even has a speaker bar at the bottom to amplify the sound from the iPad’s single speaker.

The PadDock keeps your iPad snug on all sides, and can be switched from charge and sync modes quickly so you can juice it up or use the attached USB cable to sync your music and apps with a nearby Mac or PC. The PadDock will set you back $99.99 list, but if you want an iPad stand with enough features to make it look like a desktop computer, this is the one.

I remember going to the batting cages with my dad. We went to our fair share of A’s games, too. He also helped me make a Pinewood Derby car a few years in a row. To the best of my knowledge, however, we never sent anything into space. Man, what a lousy childhood. Back in August, however, the father and son team of Luke and Max Geissbuhler (age 7) did just that.

The duo attached an HD camera (in the form of an Apple iPhone) to a weather balloon and launched the thing up into the atomosphere. “It would have to survive 100 mph winds, temperatures of 60 degrees below zero, speeds of over 150 mph, and the high risk of water landing,” Geissbuhler wrote in the introduction of a video documenting the event.

And people say the iPhone isn’t rugged?

The craft all came equipped with a self-deploying parachute and a GPS device to help the Geissbuhlers retrieve it once it came crashing back to earth.

The whole thing is the product of eight months of research. Check out the results after the jump.