Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Tag: macbook

  • My Apple Event predictions

    Tomorrow Apple is holding an event to announce new products for the Mac.
    What will be announced is anyone’s guess, but here’s what my intuition
    is telling me:

    1. A new MacBook Air is pretty much a given. The rumors are pretty
      strong that there will be an 11.6″ and 13.3″ Macbook Air, and that
      they’ll be more affordable than the current Air. I’m hoping there is
      an 11.6″ because I’m ready to upgrade my original MacBook! 
    2. New MacBook Pros. This is something I haven’t read anywhere, but I’m
      pretty sure it’s going to happen. Why? I ordered two for the school
       district on October 8th with a shipping time of 3-5 days. A week
      later I received a notification that they would ship between Oct.
      21-26. Notice the first day is the day after the Apple Event. And
      now today I received notification that they will not ship until Dec.

      1. Apple must have something planned for the MacBook Pros, and
        originally thought they would be able to ship them on the 21st, but
        something happened and they’re planning on shipping them 6 weeks
        later.
    3. OS X 10.7
    4. iLife ’11
    5. Mac App Store – Apple added the ability to sign applications in OS X
      10.5 Leopard, and with the success of the iOS App Store will create
      an App store for the Mac. Unfortunately it will still go through
      iTunes, because for some reason everything has to go through iTunes
      with Apple.

    Anything I missed that you want to see Apple unveil?

  • HIW (How I Work): The Apple MacBook

    I am asked quite often how I can keep up with everything in regards
    to educational technology, software, and hardware. After some
    reflection, I realized that it would make a good series of articles, so
    I’m going to write up How I Work.

    First up is probably the most important component of my technology
    arsenal, my Apple MacBook. During the spring of 2006 I was
    researching upgrading my 17″ iMac to a new MacBook Pro. The plan
    was to buy a beefy enough MacBook Pro that I wouldn’t want to upgrade
    for awhile. I specc’ed out the MacBook Pro that I wanted to be almost
    \$2,500! I wasn’t happy being stuck with getting such a large laptop,
    but I was in luck that Apple then announced the MacBook. After realizing I could buy a MacBook and an iMac for the same
    price as the MacBook Pro, I ordered my MacBook. After
    using it, I realized I didn’t even need a desktop at home.

    With my MacBook and VMware Fusion, I get the best
    of all worlds. I run OS X 10.5 mainly, but have a Windows XP and
    Ubuntu virtual machines also installed on the machine. Since the
    original purchase I’ve bumped the memory from 1GB to 2GB and the hard
    drive from 80GB to 200GB.

    Unfortunately, come summer 2009 when I’ll be looking at upgrading I
    don’t know what I’ll do. The new MacBook’s lack of firewire is almost a
    deal killer for me.

    When I am at home I hook my MacBook up to a 17″ LCD
    monitor and use a cheap [\$30 Micro Innovations wireless keyboard and
    mouse I purchased from Wal-mart][] (mine is a dark grey, not the hideous
    color from the picture). The combo works pretty well, except sometimes I
    have to unplug and re-plug the USB dongle that works with the set when I
    wake the MacBook up from sleep. That’s also where I keep an external
    hard drive to maintain my laptops backups using OS X’s Time Machine.

    [\$30 Micro Innovations wireless keyboard and mouse I purchased from
    Wal-mart]: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8144837