Hasta La Gadget!

Apple will use Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs in its future laptops, no surprises there, but what’s interesting about these forthcoming machines is that some of them might rely solely on Intel’s chip for both general and graphical processing tasks. That’s the word from the usual “sources familiar with Apple’s plans,” who expect “MacBook models with screen sizes of 13 inches and below” to eschew the inclusion of a discrete GPU and ride their luck on the improved graphical performance of Intel’s upcoming do-it-all chip. There are currently no sub-13.3-inch MacBooks, so the suggestion of one is surely intriguing, but the major point here seems to be that NVIDIA’s being left out of the Apple party, because MacBook Pros are also predicted to switch up to AMD-provided graphics hardware. All these changes should be taking place with Apple’s next refresh, which is naturally expected at some point in the new year. Although, as CNET points out, this could all be just a massive negotiating ploy to get NVIDIA to play nicer with its pricing, we’re inclined to believe Intel has finally gotten its integrated graphics up to a level where it pleases the discerning tastemakers at Apple.

Apple to rely on Intel’s Sandy Bridge graphics in future MacBooks, AMD GPUs in MacBook Pros? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 08:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just like last year and the year before, Apple’s kicking off its Black Friday sale in the land of Oz first. Australian Mac lovers can now buy the iMac, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air for A$121 less than their usual price, while the iPad and iPod touch dip down by A$51 apiece and the iPod nano is now A$25 cheaper. It’s all for today only, but should also be followed by similar discounts in the US and Europe.

Apple’s Australian Store discounts most things by around 10 percent, foreshadows Black Friday deals originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Nov 2010 08:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, Apple’s “Back to the Mac” press conference was all about software and a manila envelope or two, but Cupertino also sent out a silent love letter to its MacBook Pro lineup. Specifically, the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro laptops can now be configured with a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor, up from the 2.66GHz model they were limited to before, for the primo price of $200 more. That’s a pretty penny to pay for a simple 140MHz boost, but base clockspeed is only part of the story — this is almost certainly the Core i7-640M that Intel owned up to just last month, which can turbo to a lap-scorching 3.4GHz under load. If you feel like buying one, do be a dear and let us know for sure?

[Thanks, Steven H.]

Apple quietly updates MacBook Pro with optional 2.8GHz Core i7 processor originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What will happen tomorrow? A new version of OS X? Tiny MacBook Airs? Verizon iPhone announcements? Tomorrow never knows… but Steve Jobs probably does. Even if we can’t predict the future, we can at least follow along with the present, right? That’s exactly what we’ll be doing tomorrow at Engadget, as we bring you the best liveblog in the business! Tune in at the URL and times below for the full scoop on just what Apple is getting up to. You won’t want to miss this!

Here’s the liveblog post you’ll want to plant yourself at, and here are the start times around the globe:

07:00AM – Hawaii
10:00AM – Pacific
11:00AM – Mountain
12:00PM – Central
01:00PM – Eastern
06:00PM – London
07:00PM – Paris
09:00PM – Moscow
02:00AM – Tokyo (October 21st)

Apple’s ‘Back to the Mac’ event is tomorrow at 1PM ET / 10AM PT — we’ll be there live! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As far as we can tell, the general logic behind touchscreen iMac rumors goes something like this: “Apple is good at touch UIs, so it should build a touchscreen iMac.” Unfortunately, the reality of a usable, desirable touchscreen desktop computers has yet to materialize (sorry, HP and Microsoft), and so far Apple has steered clear of those dangerous waters. An international patent recently unearthed at the World Intellectual Property Organization, however, shows just how Apple might go about a touch UI on a desktop computer.

Basically, the patent covers the method of transitioning from a traditional “high resolution” UI (best operated by a mouse) to a “low resolution” UI suitable to finger operation (like iOS). A myriad of sensors can be employed to detect the user moving the screen into touch mode, and as the user does this the difficult high res bits like cursors and scrollbars and drop down menus “slide off the screen,” leaving only a touch UI at the end of the transition. It’s all very broad and vague, naturally, being a patent, but it’s an interesting idea, and makes more sense than ruining the good thing desktop UIs have going with a tacked-on touch UI in the style of Microsoft’s Windows. Of course, stuffing two UIs into one device also seems rather un-Apple like, so we’re not going to start expecting an Apple-built touchscreen iMac or MacBook to act exactly like this until Steve gets on stage and starts telling us how we magical and revolutionary it is.

Apple patent unearthed for touchscreen Macs that can flip between mouse and touch UIs with tilt of the screen originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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