Engadget says :

“Here she is, fresh off the Saturday Express. Apple’s latest Mac Pro is said to be significantly more nimble and entirely easier to upgrade than its Penryn-based predecessor, and while it’ll take us a few days yet to check out the former claim, we can already assure you that the second one is valid. Upon unboxing this beast (to be fair, it’s not all that monstrous), we immediately dug within the cover to see what was up with Apple‘s new tray system. Rather than forcing users to squeeze their hands into unfathomably tight places just to pop in a new DIMM or add in a fresh 2TB hard drive, the engineers at Cupertino found a way to place all eight RAM slots on a removable tray, meaning that you can actually take that piece elsewhere and operate under better lighting. The tray was dead simple to remove and replace, and while it’s a small inclusion, it’s definitely an appreciated one. We’ll be stressing this thing out and writing up a more thorough review soon, but for now, enjoy the snapshots / video below and after the break, respectively.”

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Lifehacker says :

“Mac OS X only: Lightweight outlining application Tree builds outlines quickly and easily, then displays your outline in a novel left-to-right flow between child and parent elements.

There’s not all that much to say about Tree beyond that. It’s lightweight and fast, is full of keyboard shortcuts for quick outline creation, and it can export any outline to OPML, meaning any outlines you make in Tree should be simple enough to import to most other outlining apps. Tree is a free download, costs a hefty $40 if you want to upgrade to the unlimited version. (Incidentally, as the Download Squad post points out, that’s the same price as the much more robust OmniOutliner, so you may want to give that a look if you’re considering paying for the full version.)”

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Morgan Webb says :

“I really appreciate all the support you’ve shown me over the past year and a half, and I’ve had a great time making WebbAlert and sharing my love of technology. When I started WebbAlert, my TV show X-Play only taped three episodes a week so I had the time to dedicate my video blog. At the beginning of the year, X-Play expanded to five episodes, and the last year has been a lot of work trying to keep up with both projects. I finally decided that I need to make a little time for other opportunities, as well as make a little time for life itself. Thanks for understanding and I hope to bring you a number of new projects in the future!”

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Gizmodo says :

“The Mac Mini is the greatest Mac that never was, always just a little too expensive and/or a little too underfeatured to be perfect. This time it’s closer than ever to perfection—but still falls short.

 

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Sure, a $500 price tag would be great. But if we can’t get that, can’t we at least get an HDMI output? Dell, Acer and others now sell teeny desktops with HDMI outputs—some even have Blu-ray players. It’s pretty much the right thing to do at this time, but Apple’s not doing it. That’s not surprising: Apple is slower to adopt popular PC standards such as USB 2.0, the CD burner, and that Blu-ray drive. And the company itself is adamant that the Mini is seen as a desktop machine, not an entertainment PC. Some people believe Apple keeps HDMI out of the Mini to protect the HDMI-laden Apple TV. If true, it’s sad, because Apple TV just isn’t good enough to protect with the life of another product.

We can all agree that it’s nice to have a reasonably affordable Mac out there in the universe, and most of us can agree with Apple’s decision not to redesign the outer shell of the thing—it’s still attractively simple. But I want a Mac Mini in my living room, and I want it connected to a 50″ flat panel TV. With one cable. Why is that wrong?

The good news is, the new Mac Mini is a worthy little beast. In spite of its seemingly wimpy 2.0GHz dual-core processor, it keeps up with most of the basic stuff you can throw at it. The internal redesign of the Mac Miniis really about coupling that Core 2 Duo with Nvidia integrated graphics, and I have to say, it seems like that worked out nicely. It’s the same GeForce 9400M chipset we see in the MacBook, the MacBook Pro and, not coincidentally, the new iMac, and when it comes to rendering 1080p movies and playing a little Quake 4 on a 24″ monitor, it gets the job done.

It gets the job done when there’s enough RAM, that is. That extra 1GB stick actually doubles the 9400M’s shared memory from 128MB to 256MB, and when you’re playing games, you’ll notice that in the textures and motion smoothness. It’s hard to tell from the shots below, but textures appearing in Quake 4 on the 2GB Mini were much closer to those on the new iMac, which is far more powerful with a 2.66GHz dual-core processor and 4GB of RAM.

Quake 4 Demo
Mac Mini with 1GB of RAM vs 2009 iMac

Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM vs 2009 iMac

Nobody is going to use the Mini as their primary gaming machine—as you can see in my Xbench and Geekbench testing, the two Mini configs always trailed more expensive Mac systems, and in many tests fared the same or worse than their predecessors—but between the Core 2 Duo and the 9400M graphics, it’s a solid computer.

Xbench test results

Geekbench test results

The better news is, there’s no good reason to buy the more expensive $800 one. The $600 config comes with the same processor and DVD burner. As I insinuated, you should up the RAM to 2GB for $50 extra, but even then, your total shouldn’t exceed $650. Unfortunately, judging by this teardown and a chat I had with Apple, they intentionally made it hard for people to upgrade it themselves.

At that point, all the $800 model has going for it is a 320GB hard drive, and nobody pays $150 for a paltry 160GB of bonus storage. Going from a 160GB drive to a 320GB drive is like going from 40mph to 50mph on a 65mph interstate. Go get an external drive—it just now took me four seconds to spot this 1TB Iomega Prestige external drive on Amazon for $117! That Mini only has five freakin’ USB 2.0 jacks—let’s don’t be afraid to tie up one or two.

My feelings on the Mini end somewhat mixed. It’s now powerful enough to be a nice iPod-syncable movie ripper/server with the Front Row experience I can control from the couch. I can still set this up without spraining my brain, but there would be lots of compromises.

For instance, it would either take a cheap Y-cable for analog stereo out, or a Toslink-to-mini optical cable ($2.24 at Monoprice) that could connect to a receiver for surround sound. It would also take a video adapter of some kind. Many TVs have DVI or VGA inputs, and all now have HDMI inputs, so there are plenty of adapters you can get. There’s a Mini DVI-to-HDMI adapter ($9.88 at Monoprice), or an even snazzier Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI plug, which Monoprice will sell for $14.25 sometime around March 15.

But you see where I’m going here, right? No matter how awesome Monoprice is when it comes to cables and adapters and crap, this is all spaghetti the Mini shouldn’t need. Apple: Where’s the flippin’ HDMI? You put not one but two video outputs on this thing, and yet I still need an adapter to plug it into anything but a $900 Apple monitor. Yes, thanks for including that Mini DVI to DVI adapter in the box, but I’m pretty sure that just proves my point. [Product Page]

In Summary
It’s nice and compact, just like its externally identical predecessors

The Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics do appear to make everything faster and smoother

Very difficult to upgrade by hand, but at least there’s a cheap RAM upgrade

No HDMI means it can’t be a great home-theater PC

Needs video adapters for most monitor or TV connection”

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Gizmodo says :

“Apple may seem different than other companies, but the recession is kicking their ass too. The move they made with the new iMac was the smartest they could make under the circumstances—it’s a great deal.

In this new iMac release, Apple didn’t invest in a radical new design. That sort of thing doesn’t go over in an economic downturn. The case is identical to all other iMacs since August 2007, down to the brushed aluminum body and the occasionally annoying high-gloss screen. What Apple did instead—something they won’t let you forget—is drop the price of the 24″ iMac from $1800 to $1500 while spiking the performance.

 

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The baseline chip used to be a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo; now it’s a 2.66GHz, with the Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics now found in almost every other Apple product. iMacs used to come standard with 2GB of RAM, now there’s 4GB in the entry-level 24 incher that I tested, along with a 640GB 3.5″ hard drive.

The 20″ iMac is cheaper at $1200, but doesn’t carry as much value: It comes standard with only 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. You’d really need to up the RAM to 4GB, so that brings the bill to $1300. At that point, you’re just $75 away from doubling the internal hard-drive capacity. Now, at $1375, you’re a stone’s throw from the other system, the $1500 iMac with its noticeably larger screen—a screen that, mind you, Apple asks $900 for when sold a la carte. (I reviewed with the iMac side-by-side with the 24″ Cinema Display; they’re essentially identical even though iMac is CCFL while the Cinema Display is LED.)

The $1500 model really sits in the sweet spot. Stepping up beyond that may not make much sense either. Apple charges $1000-a thousand dollars!—to swap 4GB of RAM for 8GB. The good news there is that there’s an easy-access RAM-swap hatch, so Apple is almost encouraging you not to buy the extra RAM now, but to upgrade on the open market later when prices drop to sane levels. You can swing a 1TB hard drive for $100 more. However, if you save the $100, you keep the 640GB internal, and have the money for most of a 1TB external too.

People who are serious about gaming or video work do have higher-end iMac choices. There’s a 2.93GHz system for $1800, and you can jump to 3.06GHz for $150 more than that. At those levels, you also get dedicated graphics processors: There’s the basic Nvidia GeForce GT 120 256MB, then the $150-more GeForce GT 130 with 512MB. Another $50 on top of that gets you the ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB. Those choices are good if you know what you’re looking for because, as the good people of iFixit found out, the iMac is not built for the average user to upgrade anything but RAM. Still, for most people—for most uses including anything less than serious gaming—it doesn’t make sense to buy above the $1500 2.66MHz iMac, especially given the performance I’ve seen.

And what have I seen? Well, you can see from these benchmark charts (which I also ran in the Mac Mini review) that the new iMac stays on top the whole time, through batteries of tests, when compared to both theMac Mini and the far more expensive MacBook Pro (using the same graphics chipset):

Xbench test results

Geekbench test results

In real world testing, I made further discoveries of the iMac’s pre-eminence among its Mac peers. Ripping a 26-track CD in iTunes took just 3 minutes and 50 seconds on the iMac, while it took nearly 10 minutes (OK, 9:45) on the Mini with 2GB of RAM.

Playing Quake 4 with framerate counter turned on also revealed hidden power. While the Mac Mini kept up with the action and detail by dropping frames—45fps average, down to 20fps during heavy fighting—the iMac mostly maintained a smooth 60fps, dipping into the 50s when things got rough.

No matter what your level of PC knowledge is, you realize that there are faster, beefier desktop systems. Apple itself has the $2500-and-up Mac Pro (with similar graphics card options and much more serious core processors), and if you really know what you’re doing, you can build or customize your own system anyway. In the Windows world, the options are almost limitless. Because of all of those other options, the number of people who will be ordering up an iMac for over $1800 will probably be small.

It also makes buying a Mini—and the necessary peripherals—less justifiable. The message, heard loud and clear in this time of financial strife, is that $1500 will get you a system that would have cost well over $2000 not long ago, and that spending less than that will mean compromises that might not hold you over for long enough. I know some of you think $1500 is too much money for a computer, and I can respect that. But for people with the right kind of budget, the new entry-level 24″ iMac is a smart buy. [Product Page]

In Summary
Low-end specifications have been notably boosted

Price has decreased—$300 per configuration—in spite of performance bumps

Very difficult to upgrade by hand, except for adding RAM

The included keyboard is trimmed down to its barest key set, but you can ask for one with a number pad at no extra cost

$1500 for the 24″ might still be considered pricey by some potential buyers, and the $1200 model doesn’t present as much value

Screen glare can be annoying, and the screen and back are easily smudged (see gallery)”

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Hak5 says :

“Darren’s got a soldering iron and knows how to use it. In this episode we kick off the HakHouse Rover project and web enable an inexpensive RC Tank using a Phidget USB Interface Kit. Then Jody Franklin joins us to talk about compiling PHP and using Netsh to renumber IP addresses in Windows. And Matt has a follow up to your questions about Napera. Plus our weekly trivia, LAN Party and a ton of fun.”

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Engadget says :

“This may look like a beloved iMac, but make no mistake, it’s just a shell of its former self. CGCC forum member Logicdustbin decided to gut the all-in-one and replace its innards with a Sega Dreamcast and 15-inch LCD monitor. The result? The iCast, a beautiful homage to simpler times. Hit up the video after the break to see this Fronk-en-shteen in action, playing a game that’ll assuredly prepare our children for a post-apocalyptic world.”

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“In this episode Peter Giannoulis joins us from TheAcademyPro.com. Chris Gerling is back in studio talking about USB Device Tracking. And Matt is building the new HakHouse firewall/router with PFsense. Plus a ton of haksnax to get your grub on.”

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Gizmodo says :

“On the surface iMovie ’09 doesn’t appear that much different than the iMovie ’08 everyone complained about. But when you start digging through the software, you realize Apple actually listened to all the user complaints.

Let’s face it, iMovie ’08 was a step backwards for the iMovie software, so much so that Apple even made it a point to keep iMovie ’06 available as a download well after the software had been updated. The biggest complaint with iMovie ’08 was it lacked all the special features found in the previous version that made video editing so fun and easy.

iMovie ’09 has regained most of the features that were lost in the ’08 version and even has some new ones like video stabilization, green screen and animated maps. The UI still lacks a dedicated timeline that most video editors are accustomed to using, but to make up for it iMovie ’09 has new tools like the precision editor and advanced drag-and-drop capabilities.

Here’s a closer look at the new features of iMovie ’09:

Precision Editor

Apple’s response to all the complaints about iMovie ’08 lacking a timeline is this new precision editor window. Once you’re in a project, you select precision editor in a clips pop-up window, and the bottom half of iMovie becomes the editor. This tool is intended to help make more precise edits between two clips in your project, and does this by showing the two clips in an overlapping fashion. You simply click the spot in a clip you want to cut at and than iMovie automatically moves the clip to create the cut you want.

The window can also display audio tracks, effects and titles along side the video clips so it feels more like a timeline than a simple project window. There is also the option to move titles and change audio tracks of clips. The problem here is that the precision editor won’t let you do precise manipulation of a music track. This is frustrating, especially when you’re trying to line your video up with music. For the simple trimming of clips precision editor works pretty well—better that than nothing—but it’s still no substitute for a timeline.

Advanced Drag-and-Drop

After checking Show Advanced Tools under iMovie Preferences, this drag-and-drop tool shows much more features. In iMovie ’08 dropping a clip from the library on-top of a clip in the project window simply inserts the library clip into the project. Now in iMovie ’09 the same action brings up a pop-up menu filled with choices. It has options to replace the clip four different ways into your project or just to insert it the same way it would have in iMovie ’08. The best features though are the Audio Only, Cutaway, Picture-in-Picture and Green Screen—all of which are completely new to iMovie ’09.

Video Stabilization

For the common shaky video clip using video stabilization will impressively make the annoying camera movement disappear. iMovie ’09 does this stabilization in two steps. First it will analyze the video clip frame by frame and pixel by pixel, comparing one side of the frame to the other. Once it has analyzed the clip it applies a function that scales, rotates and moves the video based on the comparison. It zooms and trims the clip as much as it needs to apply the reverse movement of the camera shake and still not go outside the video frame. What’s more interesting is this video stabilization is the same effect Apple uses in their professional visual effects program Shake.

Video Effects, Themes, Titles, and Transitions

Thank God or maybe Jobs, but video effects like speed, reverse play, and color adjustments are all back in iMovie ’09. The clip inspector window now has options for all these effects. There might not be as many effects as there were in iMovie ’06 but there are some new ones, like the cool Sci-Fi and Heat Wave color shifts.

Themes have also returned to iMovie. There are six different themes to choose from and each one puts a visual effect on the first and last clip in the project. The first will show an intro title like a scrap book with video playing on it and at the end it will insert a directed by title over your last clip. What’s cool is it will also add theme-related transitions to the transitions selection. Same goes for the titles. You only get about four new transitions and titles, but it’s nice to keep each element of the project in theme.

iMovie ’08 only had 12 titles to choose from which was pretty pathetic, but now iMovie ’09 has over 32. The titles aren’t as customizable as they were in iMovie ’06 but with new additions like Clouds and Organic Main it might make up for it. As for transitions, only a few new ones have been added but nothing spectacular.

Maps and Backgrounds

The maps visual affects are pretty cool but not something that can be used with every project. There’s eight different moving maps to choose from—not just fake Indiana Jones maps but real ones that you can put your real locations on, as well as set your desired duration. When changing the destination points on a map, it conveniently pulls up a search window for city or airport, which makes finding a specific location very simple. After playing with these maps, I can say the best feature is the ability to add video effects. Since you can add the same effects to maps that you can to video clips, you can make Sci-Fi-looking worlds, like I did in the the video above.

It’s very sad that a background selection was not available in iMovie ’08. Something so simple like a background is really essential to giving users the freedom to create any type of project they want. With an assortment of solid colored and moving backgrounds, iMovie ’09 now has the the option to a add a simple color frame to the project. I for one am glad backgrounds are finally back.

Edit to Music

This is another new feature in iMovie ’09 that is intended to assist at editing to music or making a music video. What this option does is allow the user to drop beat markers on a music track and then using those beat markers iMovie ’09 will adjust the video clip durations to match the markers. This option will take some getting used but it seems like a valiant effort on Apple’s part to create something useful.

After playing around with the edit to music and green screen options I was able to create a fun little video. Before you start asking who the hell these kids are, all the sample video clips I used were provided by Apple so ask them.

Overall
Apple attempted to recreate iMovie for iLife ’08, and in many people’s views, this was a massive failure. With iMovie ’09, the company is really trying to make up for it—or perhaps prove that it had to tear down the previous system to make a decent new system. Most of the points that experienced enthusiasts complained about, like lack of creative features, has been addressed. But are the additions of features like video stabilization and effects enough to make this iMovie ’09 as useful as iMovie ’06 was? At this point, I still think it’s not. The new tools like precision editor and drag-and-drop are nice needed additions for the layout but a timeline is still better. Bottom line is this: If you didn’t mind the new iMovie layout but wanted more creative tools, you got them. But if the lack of a timeline layout in iMovie ’08 is what got your goat, you’re probably not going to like iMovie ’09 either. Sorry. [iMovie '09]“

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“USB missile launchershave been around for a while, but this version is mobile—allowing you to infiltrate your co-worker’senemy’s cubicle trench and win the battle for office supremacy.

Each tank can be controlled within a radius of 25-feet using a USB radio transmitter and the included PC software. Throw in the 12-foot range of the foam dart warheads and anything within 37-feet of your computer is a potential target. In fact, as many as four of these tanks can be controlled from a single PC interface, so you could conceivably create your own tank battalion to take out several targets at once—or lay down some serious firepower on a single high-value target.”

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