Apple announced new upgrades to their MacBook Air computers at WWDC 2013 keynote. The new MacBook Air will feature all day battery life. The all day battery life basically means it covers upto 9 hours for the 11 inch version and 12 hours battery backup for 13 inch version.
Here are some of the basic specs and pricing for new MacBook Air computers in India.
11 – inch MacBook Air
13 – inch MacBook Air
Display: 11.6 – inch widescreen display screen.Resolution: 1366×768 (native)
Display: 13.3 – inch widescreen display screenResolution: 1440X900 (native)
OS: Mac OS X Mountain Lion
OS: Mac OS X Mountain Lion
Processor: 1.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
Processor: 1.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
Battery: Up to 9 hours of surfing the web. 8 Hours iTunes film playback.
Battery: Up to 12 hours of surfing the web. 10 hours of iTunes film playback
Price:
Rs. 67,900 for MacBook Air with 128 GB Flash Storage.
Rs. 74,900 for MacBook Air with 256 GB Flash Storage.
Price:
Rs. 74,900 for MacBook Air with 128 GB Flash Storage.
Rs. 88,900 for MacBook Air with 256 GB Flash Storage.
The price of the new MacBook Air are actually a bit lesser than last year’s pricing. That is very surprising considering the US Dollar to Indian Rupee ratio is at an all time high. Though it might also mean that there are simply a lot more MacBooks being sold in India.
Looking at the pricing, it makes very little sense to buy a 11-inch MacBook Air with 256 GB storage as it is the same price as that 13-inch MacBook Air, albeit with half the memory storage size.
Yesterday, June 10th, was a big day for Apple. As everyone expected, Apple released iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 and the event was mind blowing. Adding to that, they released iTunes Radio, new MacBook Airs, Mac Pros and lots more. This is much different than the Apple which used to release a thinner, lighter phone and call it a day.
The most exciting thing for me was OS X 10.9 aka Mavericks, that’s because I spend way lot more time on my Mac. And for starters, Mavericks is a place in California and Apple has now moved away from big cats for naming of OS X.
So, here’s what’s new in the next version of world’s most advanced desktop operating system.
Finder Tabs and Tags
Lets rule out the obvious ones first. Tabs in Finder have been rumoured for a quite a bit of time now. And because Finder is focused so much on drag-and-drop functionality, it perfectly makes sense to have tabs.
Tabs in Finder look very similar to that of Safari. If you have multiple Finder windows open, you can group them into one.
Next up, Tags. This is more of a power users’ feature. Tags offer a simple way to categorise files and let you browse files of a specific tag, in Finder. You can set tags to a file from the file saving window. Also, you can do tag-specific search in Finder. Not sure about Spotlight. Also, tags get synced via iCloud.
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Better Notifications
I love the Notification centre in Mountain Lion and with more app developers supporting, it keeps getting more useful. In Mavericks, Notifications become actionable! (say, a bit like Android).
So, think of it, you can now reply to Messages, FaceTime calls, Mails – without even opening the app. This also opens a great opportunity for developers.
Websites can now send notifications, even when Safari is not open. Again, this is a great news for web developers. There’s also another small addition – if you put your Mac to sleep and come back, it now gets you the list of notifications that you missed. Pretty nice.
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iBooks, Calendar and Maps
Apple has released two unexpected apps for Mavericks: iBooks and Maps. This is a nice update for all of you who buy books from the iTunes store. The app is pretty sleek, too. It has study cards built in, you can highlight and take notes and lot more.
Next up, Maps. It looks beautiful and useless at the same time. It’s beautiful because of features like Flyover, especially when you make the app to go full screen and with a multi touch trackpad – the experience must be awesome. But, Apple is yet to fix the Maps debacle.
The Calendar app too got an update. This is of course because Apple has now moved on to flat design and the stitches in the Calendar app look hideous. The newer Calendar looks clean and also has cool stuff like Facebook integration.
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Performance
This is probably the most exciting part for me, as a faster, smoother OS X is always welcome. It seems like Apple has worked a lot on memory management in this version of OS X.
There’s stuff like Timer Coalescing, Compressed Memory, App Nap and lot more. I personally found App Nap interesting. It basically slows down all the background apps and will let the current app (which you’re using) use more resources. Timer Coalescing is set to increase battery life by a good amount and Compressed Memory should bring on smooth 60 frames per second scrolling.
I don’t know if this affects booting speed, but if it does, that’s a very good thing.
And lots more
Adding to these set of features, there’s better Multi display support, a redesigned Safari and iCloud Keychain support. The latter is pretty huge, as it basically kills one of the most popular password managers for Mac and iOS – 1Password.
Overall, it’s a considerably big update for OS X. There’s no clarity on whether this update is going to be priced at 20$ like Mountain Lion, or totally free.
This just in – Apple has confirmed that the WWDC keynote will be live streamed for all Apple devices including Macs, iPhones/iPods, iPads, and Apple TVs – via Apple’s website.
Apple did the same thing for last year’s WWDC, i.e. live streaming only for Apple devices, but I’m sure you’ll get an alternate stream some where.
But in case you have an Apple device, make sure it runs Safari 4 or later and you’re good to go.
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The event is set to start at 10AM PDT, which turns out to be 10:30 PM IST (in case you’re living in India). You can use this little tool to get a quick idea on when the keynote starts.
Rumors have it that Apple is going to release iOS 7 and OS X 10.9, both of them showcasing flat UI. But no one really knows – which is the reason why there’s a lot of suspense for this year’s WWDC.
So, make sure you tune into this event via the official stream (via website), or an alternate stream, if you don’t have an Apple device lying near you.
Dropbox has announced the latest experimental build 2.3.12. This experimental build brings in an option to import photos from iPhoto, share screenshot by just tapping the Print Screen button on the keyboard and an option to move non-Dropbox files and folders to Dropbox with just a click.
The Import from iPhoto scans for photos and events in your library and shows up on the system notification tray. With few clicks, you can upload them easily to your Dropbox folder as viewable albums. Of course, you can share these albums with your friends on the web. Note that this import feature is available only for iPhoto 7.0 and higher.
Screenshot sharing is the best update in this new build. You can enable this feature in the Import tab in Dropbox settings. It is enabled by default once you download and install the latest experimental build. Once done, all the screenshots that you take with the Print Screen button are saved to /Screenshots directory inside Dropbox folder.
Ctrl + Print Screen combo will take the screenshot, upload it to the folder and also copy the screenshot’s unique Dropbox URL to the clipboard. You can easily share this link with others on the web now.The key combo is Cmd + Shift + 3 or 4 in the case of OS X.
Another notable update is Move to Dropbox option in the right click context menu. You can now right click any folder or file on your computer and it will be moved to Dropbox folder. Not copied.
You can get this experimental build right now on your computer by downloading the file from the Dropbox Forums. There is a file for the Linux users too, but it doesn’t bring much updates.
Android being an open source ecosystem, there are many apps available to suit the users’ needs. There are many top keyboards available on Google Play. SwiftKey and Swype are the top two Android keyboards that everyone love. If you are a Nexus user or a Nexus devotee, you know pretty well that the stock Android keyboard from Google is also a great choice.
Image Credit : Google Keyboard on Google Play
Unfortunately till yesterday, the stock Android keyboard was limited only to the Nexus users. But from today, every Android user running 4.0+ can get the stock Android keyboard from Google Play and install it on their device. According to the latest reports, this new stock Android keyboard app is available only to the English speaking users right now. The other countries like India don’t have this update yet. Google assures that it’ll be brought soon.
The stock Android keyboard boasts of some of the great features like Gesture Typing, Google voice typing, Next-word suggestions and current-word completions. This Google keyboard has dictionaries for 26 languages and has various keyboard layouts. Works perfect on your tablets too.
Just when you thought the month of June is filled with a lot of product launches, here’s a new (and unexpected) one. Google plans to host two ‘special’ events for Mobile Chrome this month – on June 7th and 13th.
Both of the events will be streamed live on YouTube.
So, what is Google even planning to release? That too, two weeks after Google I/O? Honestly, I have no idea. Google Developers Live is a show done by people from Google’s developer relations team about many products like Android, Maps, Google+ and more. They’re generally streamed via YouTube through their official channel.
But the fact that this event is called ‘special’, made it interesting to me. Also, they don’t generally host events just for Chrome or the mobile versions of it.
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They will probably talk about their future ideas with Blink or if we’re lucky, may be some new features in Mobile Chrome. Wait and see.
On the video page, you can ask questions related to Chrome and those will be answered by developers at Google. There are some interesting ones like “Will Blink reduce the memory usage of the browser?” – which I really want to happen.
Nevertheless, if you’re a web designer/developer, you should definitely keep an eye on this.
On the heels of Samsung Galaxy S4 running stock Android being announced at Google I/O, Google is bringing a HTC One running pure Android on June 26. The HTC One has been a highly rated as the best looking Android phone out there.
The HTC One Nexus (HTC One with stock Android) will go for sale on Google Play on June 26. It will be available only for US consumers for now and the only variant available will be 32 GB. This Nexus styled variant of HTC One will be priced at $599. It is interesting to note that the stock Samsung Galaxy S4 is also being launched on the same day with a price tag of $649, $50 more than the stock HTC One. The software updates of this stock HTC One will be delivered to the users straight from Google without being customized by HTC.
Image Credits : HTC Official Blog
HTC One with Stock Android – Features
This HTC One with stock Android will start shipping only with a silver color.
Similar to the HTC One, this stock HTC One will also be having a quad core Snapdragon 600 chipset and is clocked at 1.7 GHz.
This HTC One with stock Android comes with an unlocked bootloader and it will ship SIM free.
Despite the fact that HTC One is regarded very highly as a phone, the company itself has been facing many issues regarding supply chain and revenues. So it is worth watching if its availability is erratic on the Google Play Store – as compared to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 device.
Do you think HTC will be successful with this stock HTC One? Do drop in your comments.
This had to happen and many people have seen this coming. Microsoft is finally trying to address many of users’ common annoyances with a small update to its OS, Windows 8.
Windows 8 had got a lot of criticism that it’s much harder to use than the previous versions and that the change is too drastic. All that is indeed true. Apparently, it’s impossible for Microsoft to completely take a U-turn and get back to Windows 7. So, now they’re trying to appease users by making it a little less confusing.
Here’s the new stuff Microsoft’s releasing with Windows 8.1.
If you hit the button, you’ll be taken back to the Start screen. Something is better than nothing, right?
Also, for all you Start screen haters, Microsoft has added a nice new feature to 8.1 and that’s boot to desktop. It will be off by default, but I’m sure there’ll be many users who will search for it and switch it on.
Do more inside Metro
How much ever Microsoft tries to push Metro apps over desktop apps, it’s not going to change the fact that Metro apps suck. All stock Metro apps in Windows 8 are going to get updated, that includes Maps, Photos, Mail and etc.
Also, you can do a lot more customisation using Settings app itself, instead of relying on Control Panel. Again, it’s just Microsoft pushing Metro apps.
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App snapping has improved too. If you have a multi monitor setup, you can now snap 3 Metro apps. You can also snap windows of the same app. Think of viewing two websites loaded side by side in two Metro IE windows.
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Apart from these, there are small improvements like you can now search Bing through the Search feature in Charms bar. Windows Store, the ghost town, is updated with a better UI and more information and charts related to apps.
It seems like the update will be free for existing Windows 8 users and will probably made available in the Windows Store itself. (think OS X Mountain Lion)
Can these improvements make Windows 8 less irritating for you? Put that in the comments.
Have you noticed a small, white and blue check mark symbol on some popular Facebook pages recently? If not, head to the official Facebook page of Barack Obama, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez or any other popular celebrity. You will notice a small white and blue check mark symbol indicating that they are verified pages.
Yesterday, Facebook rolled out these special verified badges would show up on popular profiles and pages. This move is to prove that those profiles are the original ones and not a fake ones. Just like Twitter’s policies and now Google+, these Facebook verified badges won’t be given to any normal Facebook user.
At the moment this feature seems to be only available to US based users.
But the recent updates show that, Facebook people with a relatively large subscriber base seem to get verified.
It is good that Facebook is adding verified symbols to very popular profiles and pages. This has clearly helped resolve confusion over fake and real profiles on Twitter so it should be helpful similarly on Facebook.
Do you think Facebook is trying to hard to become like Twitter? Do drop in your comments.
Twitter has just sent a minor update to both its iPhone and Android apps showcasing a new Tweet composer.
They have simplified the process of composing a tweet. For example, in the iPhone app, you just get three options – attach location, take a photo or choose a photo. You then get to choose filters for your photos and you’re done.
On iPhone, the Twitter app is much wider now, taking up full space. That can be a considerable improvement for readability. Also, the app notifies you when a friend of you joins Twitter (which is confirmed by checking contacts in your E-mail, I guess).
On the other hand, Twitter for Android now takes full advantage of Android’s powerful notifications system and groups multiple notifications into one. You get to see user’s display picture in the notification itself and they are expandable too.
