Hasta La Gadget!

Apple may not be much on the idea of a 7-inch tablet, but an 11-inch ultraportable? Now that’s an idea even the engineers in Cupertino could dig. When we reviewed the 11-inch MacBook Air, we found an awful lot to love — that all-Flash design is definitely a boon, and the more-mobile-than-mobile design is sure to be loved by road warriors and light packers everywhere. But it’s still (comparatively) sluggish, and it’s lacking a backlit keyboard. Enough from us, though — we’re here to hear what kind of changes you would make. Would you have thrown a faster chip in there at the expense of the case? Boosted the screen resolution? Added an SD card slot? Bit the bullet and tossed in USB 3.0? Comments are open below — dive on it!

How would you change Apple’s 11-inch MacBook Air? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple today posted its financial results for the first quarter of 2011, and the company has plenty to celebrate, pulling in $26.74 billion dollars–that’s up from $15.68 billion the same time last year.

Apple moved 7.33 million iPads, 16.24 million iPhones (up 86 percent over last year), and 4.13 million Macs (up 23 percent over last year). iPod sales decreased, meanwhile, with 19.45 million (down seven percent), continuing no doubt to be cannibalized by iPhone sales.

The company’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, was, not surprisingly, optimistic about the whole thing,

We couldn’t be happier with the performance of our business, generating $9.8 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter. Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $22 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $4.90.

A release issued by the company also contained a quote from CEO Steve Jobs,

We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales. We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.

It might not fool the dedicated (or even slightly attentive) thief, but for keeping your new 11-inch MacBook Air safe as you dash from the coffee-shop table to grab another little sachet of sugar, it might just do the job.

“It” is a plastic skin for Apple’s new ultra-portable laptop, which turns the computer into a passable facsimile of a paper notebook. The Composition Notebook Skin, designed by Flickr user Beyond the Tech, even features a cover for the MacBook’s wrist-rests that mimics lined paper – although if somebody has gotten as far as opening the lid of you Mac, it’s unlikely that this last effort will fool them.

If you think such a disguise is either effective or just plain cool, you can grab Beyond the Tech’s image files and use them to make your own. You don’t actually have to print the PNG files onto plastic or anything messy like that. You just take the files and send them off to a custom skin-maker like Zagg, which will take care of everything for you.

My Composition Notebook Skin [Beyond the Tech / Flickr]

Beyond the Tech’s skinmods [Beyond the Tech via the Giz]

See Also:

• $13 Add-On Turns iPhone into Leica
• Rainbow Apple Sticker: The Ultimate iPad Accessory

We know, it’s shocking, but some people think that Apple might actually introduce some new home and mobile computers next year. DigiTimes is reporting that MacBook Pro and iMac refreshes are coming, the latter specifically getting “a new panel size and a price point for the mainstream market.” That certainly screams “smaller” and “cheaper” to us, but don’t let us rain on your desktop-crushing, 55-inch all-in-one dreams. Regarding the MacBook Pro rumor, there are said to be four or more revised models arriving with “a slight change in chassis design” and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion onboard. Both sets of revisions are said to be due sometime in the first half of next year, which won’t be “next” for very long at all.

New iMac and MacBook Pros coming in 2011? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 06:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple announces firmware update to relieve those nagging MacBook Air display issues originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 13:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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