Macs may be a minority of PCs in any business, but these days they are used by most businesses. And as more companies roll out "choose your own PC" and "bring your own PC" policies, IT will only need to be more familiar with managing Mac OS X systems.
You don't need to be a Steve Jobs to see that as laptops become ever thinner and tablets become more and more popular, convergence of the products is inevitable. As that day approaches, Apple is preparing to be ready for it.
At the same time Apple released its long-awaited Mac OS X 10.7 Lion (in a first, via online-only distribution), the tech giant also updated two of its Macintosh computers to include the Thunderbolt external bus technology that provides transfer rates of up to 10Gbps and supports storage, network, and video connections. The MacBook Air slim laptop and the Mac Mini small-footprint desktop both now come with Thunderbolt. The MacBook Pro and iMac were released with Thunderbolt ports earlier this year. Only the Mac Pro ships without Thunderbolt.
The success Apple has had with its MacBook Air refresh will likely lead the company to completely redesign its MacBook Pro line in favor of a thinner and lighter form factor.
Sony has introduced a new Vaio Z laptop to rival Apple's MacBook Air slenderness. Sony's new carbon fibre laptop is not only thinner and lighter than the Air, but also packs a punch in the specs department.
When Intel showed off the specifications for and a prototype of its new "Ultrabook" mobile platform in late May, the thin and light laptop design looked awfully familiar to a lot of Mac owners.
Apple this month will start to mass produce the next generation version of the MacBook Air, according to AppleInsider.
Another stolen laptop has been recovered with the one-two punch of laptop recovery software -- which took covertly took photos of the thief, a blog on Tumblr, and Twitter.
Dell has teased its upcoming XPS 15z ultra-thin laptop on Facebook, posting photos and a video to pique consumer interest. The 15.6-inch laptop sports a slim and streamlined design and, like the late Dell Adamo, is meant to take on the MacBook Air.
The latest entry in the ultra-slim laptop stakes is the MSI X-Slim X-370. The X-370, announced today, joins the growing ranks of ultra-slim portable notebooks like the MacBook Air and Samsung Series 9. The X-370 runs the latest AMD Fusion processor, is less than an inch thick, and weighs just a bit over 3 pounds, making it a serious ultraportable contender.
You can thank me in advance for not calling the ultra-slim Samsung 9 Series laptop a "MacBook Air killer," which it certainly is not. It is, however, a sleek featherweight of a portable PC, one that gives Apple's attractive Air a run for its money in the look-at-me competition. Unveiled at CES 2011 in January, the Series 9 will go on sale Thursday, March 17.
Apple unveiled a completely refreshed line of MacBook Pro laptops this week. The new MacBook Pros have a variety of improvements over their predecessors, and some unique features only available from Apple. But, as with all things Apple you will pay a premium for having the half-eaten fruit logo on the case of your laptop.
The teardown experts at iFixit turned their attention this week to Apple's latest version of the 15-inch Unibody MacBook Pro. The Early 2011 edition looks a lot like its predecessors, with two new features on the logic board. It's the first Apple portable with a quad-core processor, Intel's 2.0 or 2.2 GHz Core i7, and it includes the shiny-new Thunderbolt I/O connection for screaming data and display transfers.
It looks like all those rumors about a MacBook Pro refresh coming Thursday instead of in early March are true. The online version of the Apple Store was down this morning and, just in time before the big reveal, a photo has leaked online showing the specs for the new 15-inch version of the refreshed MacBook Pro.
Apple refreshed its MacBook Pro laptop line Thursday, and it's not just about speeds and feeds this time. With the addition of Intel's Sandy Bridge processor, AMD graphics, Facetime-enabled HD camera and a new high-speed Thunderbolt I/O port (reportedly 12 times faster than Firewire), this year's MacBook Pro update is a significant revamp. Let's take a closer look at what's new in the 2011 MacBook Pro.