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After weeks of rumours it seems Apple have finally come out and officially announced it will be staging an event on Wednesday Jan 27th at 10am PST. It will take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco. For us UK peeps this will be at 6pm, so make sure you get home from work sharpish! The event has been labeled ‘Come see our latest creation’. This is the biggest indicator yet that Apple will be showing it’s iSlate Tablet device, the first new product since the iPhone debuted at Macworld 2007. So what can we expect? Well so far the strongest rumours suggest…

• 10-inch Touch Sensitive Display
• Runs custom ‘Tablet OS’ a mixture of iPhone OS and Mac OS X
• Tablet Apps on AppStore – Custom made for bigger screen
• Subscription based Digital Content such as the New York Times delivered to Tablet
• SIM Card Slot for 3G Mobile Broadband Connectivity

Steve Jobs himself is supposedly ‘very happy’ with the device, this after he actually dismissed Tablet PCs in 2008 claiming they were ‘only good for browsing the web on the can’ Does this mean Apple have something special on the cards? Are all them patents purporting ways of giving touchscreen keyboards more tactile feedback going to come to fruition? I certainly hope so.

Hi all, just a quick post to let you know I have started this years Race Schedule. So far  the start times and practice info isn’t 100% but I have laid down the main race dates as a starting point. Also of note, I am keeping it all on the same Calendar as last year so you guys can just keep it subscribed year after year. There was a slight issue though, I have changed the URL slightly to reflect the fact that it wasn’t *just* a 2009 Calendar. Please re-subsribe by hitting the button below. ReTweet to spread the word.

Oh and just incase you haven’t heard, there’s a new guy in town…

Earlier today Apple released a software update for the AppleTV. It’s mentioned in the release notes that it’s been given a “simpler and faster interface”. I’m not sure it’s that much quicker to be honest, the menu lag still pops up on occasions and the remote can be as unresponsive as ever. The front end menu has completely changed, something I’ve been hoping would happen for some time. I got a bit fed up of the bland old menu, this newer look brings more colour to the screen, and uses a menu system not too dissimilar to the PlayStation 3’s. Sorry for the quality of the picture, I took it straight off my TV with the iPhone.

After seeing the ‘Internet’ menu I was hoping we’d see BBC’s iPlayer magically appear, but it wasn’t to be this time. Instead the newest addition, next to YouTube, is Internet Radio. This is a welcome bonus for me as I regularly tune in to the Electronica stations. I tried a couple of stations and everything seemed to work flawlessly, you get a Growl style notification at the bottom left of the screen letting you know what you’re listening while you browse through other stations.

Another new feature added is Genius Mixes. This was introduced in iTunes 9.0 and expands on Apple’s Genius mode. When selected you are presented with a choice of Mixes split by Genre. Once chosen, iTunes (or the AppleTV in this case) will keep playing songs it thinks fit together, until it runs out of ideas music. Notice the notification in the bottom left, showing I’m still listening to a Radio Station.

One of the few new features I was hoping for the most was the ability to view your iTunes LP’s in full screen on your HDTV. Apple granted my wish and have supposedly included this in the update. Only trouble is, the two iTunes LP’s that I own do not show up on the AppleTV no matter what I do. I’ve tried manual sync, creating a dedicated playlist, even tried sharing it off my MacBook, nothing makes the LP’s show up.

UPDATE
After a quick tweet to my friend Sam over at Fruit Bytes, she found a document released by Apple with information about this new feature. It seems we must wait for an email telling us when AppleTV compatible versions of our existing iTunes LP’s are available!

Since Apple released the newest iMacs just under a week ago I’ve been trying to decide which would be the best option. After a bit of indecision I thought, I need the daddy, the top of the line, the i7! This new CPU from Intel is a Quad Core demon. It uses four dedicated Cores, but with the use of HyperThreading can have up to eight virtual Cores. When the software doesn’t call on all four Cores, the processor can turn on Turbo mode. This turns it into a two Core beast, running as high as 3.46GHz. Talk about the best of both worlds.

So with my heart set on the i7 system, I realise there are two stumbling blocks. Firstly, they don’t ship till ‘November’ and secondly, I don’t have enough money yet. Anyway, after sticking the thing in the basket online I was checking on upgrades. With the four DIMM slots you can have up to 16GB of RAM in there, although this will cost you close to £1000 from Crucial UK! So I’m looking online for more info and benchmarks of this i7 CPU and notice it supports triple channel memory. Most of the new mobos shipping only have 3 RAM slots and people are running 6GB in their machines. The new iMac has 4 slots. So what will happen, will Apple enable triple channel? Will it be better to run 6GB in your iMac even though 8GB is the more cost effective method? It’ll be interesting to see once they ship!

UPDATED*

After a bit more digging I’ve found that the iMac i7 is using the i7-8xx platform and will not support triple channel memory. This is kind of good news really, as I’ll now be able to throw 4 x 2GB modules at it for a fairly cost effective 8GB of memory. Here’s a chart showing the various platforms, I’ve highlighted the iMacs.

What’s interesting now is, the table clearly shows the platform is capable of DDR3-1333 RAM. Apple is shipping theirs with DDR3-1067. Will we be able to stick quicker RAM in the i7 iMac? Another question that now remains unanswered!

Rumours have been rife of late that Apple were seeking to replace their current Mighty Mouse with an all new, fully touch sensitive bit of kit. One of the major complaints regarding the Mighty Mouse was inconsistent scrolling, caused by a build up of gunk in the scroll ball workings. This usually rendered the downward scrolling of the mouse useless, unless you had the nerve to open it up and clean it yourself. Plug time I made a guide for this very problem here.

Apple have also been battling with the naming of the Mighty Mouse, with medical company Man & Machine claiming rights for the name. Man & Machine have released five revisions of their Mighty Mouse. Since losing this case, Apple has rebranded their version, simply, Apple Mouse. Today though, we were introduced to it’s successor, the Magic Mouse.

What’s new in the new Magic Mouse? Two words, Multi touch. Magic Mouse expands on what the Mighty Mouse introduced. No buttons to differentiate Left and Right clicking, just sensors. You might have noticed that dreaded scroll wheel has also gone. Now you simply use the mouse much like a trackpad. Scrolling is taken care of with a single finger swipe in the centre of the mouse. The quicker you swipe your finger, the quicker it scrolls (where have you seen that before?) Apple have also added a few other nifty gestures, like the two finger swipe to browse through your Photos or iTunes library in Coverflow.

The Magic Mouse doesn’t come cheap though. Although it’s bundled with every new iMac, you’ll have to fork out £55 if you want one for your current setup. The one thing I must say is the design looks a lot more comfortable than the Mighty Mouse. The shape and curvature of the body looks like it’ll fit snuggly in your hand and work well for prolonged use. I am also very glad they kept some tactile feedback and didn’t just give us a touch screen slapped onto a mouse.

Head over to the Apple site to see a video of it in action.

After getting home from work earlier today I fell asleep on the sofa, only to be woken up by a Ping! alert from a friend mentioning the Apple Store was down. With that, I soon woke up and quickly dusted myself down, made a drink and headed to my Mac. Looks like I’d woken just in time, as minutes later the news all over Twitter was of new iMacs with different sized screens. Once all the news seeped through, I just looked at my current 20″ ACD in awe of the new 27 inch iMac, it’s a thing of sheer beauty!

Apple have completely dropped  the 20 and 24-inch models in a very aggressive move, that paves way for new 16:9 aspect ratio LED backlit panels. The days of the 17-inch iMac are long forgotten! So what does that mean for us users? Well screen aspects are now akin to the HDTV’s in your living room, which means less black bars above and below your Movies. Apple have taken the screen resolutions to the next level, the 21.5-inch model boasts a full 1080p display (1920 x 1080) while the 27-inch packs in an awe-inspiring amount of pixels at 2560 x 1440.

So what’s powering these new displays? Apple have thrown in three very nice options for us. The base 21.5-inch model ships with the excellent GeForce 9400M Integrated solution. But if you fancy more grunt you can choose the second model up which uses an ATi Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB VRAM. For the gamers out there, both 27-inch models can be bought with a ATi Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB VRAM. This is a very nice GPU and should easily run the latest games. One thing I was a little disappointed with was Apple scrimping on the VRAM. It would’ve been nice to have a 1GB option, especially with the crazy resolution the 27-inch model is pumping out.

Something tells me Apple had a lot of 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo processors left in the stock room. All three of the lower end models (if you can call them that) use this processor, the same processor that was saved for the very top of the line 24-inch iMac in the previous lineup. This time though, the pièce de résistance sports an Intel i5 Quad Core processor, this is a first for Apple and should tie in nicely with Grand Central Dispatch, built directly into Snow Leopard. If you’re wondering where the Intel i7 processor is, that’s a BTO option, costing an extra £160.

Something that wasn’t obvious at first, and I only spotted when I went to order a new iMac (window shopping style) was the release of an updated Apple Remote. Keeping in with the Aluminium theme, this sleek little beauty still has the same number of buttons as the older, white model. When I first saw it I thought it had an extra button slapped on there, but it turns out they’ve simply relocated the Play/Pause button. I was slightly disappointed by this, as sometimes I feel the Apple Remote is a bit limited with so few buttons. Oh well, Apple do like to keep it simple. As is the norm of late, the new Remote does not ship free of charge with new Macs, it’s an optional extra at £15. Your shopping basket is about to burst, isn’t it?

Other noteworthy inclusions to the new lineup include:

• 4 DIMM Slots – upping maximum RAM to a whopping 16GB.
• 27-inch models now support Video Input from MiniDisplay Port sources. Absolutely awesome news!
• Built-in SD Card slot, located beneath the Optical Drive slot
• Redesigned and much improved Speakers, offering more bass and better clarity
• Wireless Keyboard and new Wireless Magic Mouse included with every iMac (more on them later!)
• Meet ENERGY STAR 5.0 and EPEAT Gold requirements. Greenest iMacs yet.
• Amazing 178° viewing angle thanks to premium display technology called in-plane switching (IPS).
• 27-inch is wall mountable with optional VESA Mount.
• Rear side of iMac is now completely Aluminium for a continuous, precision finish.
• 2TB Hard Drive option on all but the lowest end model.

So, I just need to save some pennies and sell my Mac mini now. Got to have me a 27-inch beast!

I recently ordered my self a couple of Blu-ray movies from play.com as they had a special “buy 1 get 1 free” offer on at the time. My choices were Valkyrie and I, Robot, both of which I have yet to see at the Cinema. They turned up today and I noticed Valkyrie also included a ‘Digital Copy’ of the film for you to load on your iPod/iPhone. This was the first time I’d come across this before and wondered how it worked. So I went ahead and popped the bonus DVD into my Mac mini and was greeted by this screen.

Once I’d double clicked the icon, iTunes opened and Valkyrie was mounted in the Devices section of the sidebar (much like an audio cd) I then selected that and got greeted with this screen.

The code is found on the inside of the Blu-ray case. Once entered, Apple authorises the movie and it becomes yours as if you’d bought it off the iTunes Store. The file is then copied over from the DVD into your Library.

Overall I’m fairly impressed with the whole process. Whenever I’ve bought a standard DVD lately I’ve always created a digital copy for use in Front Row or my Apple TV. With Blu-ray I’m limited as I don’t have a Blu-ray drive in any of my computers. I’m hoping this isn’t some Sony UMD fad and that more studios decide on including this with their movies.

Over the years I’ve always used a Dashboard Widget to add song lyrics to my iTunes Library. At the beginning we had Sing that iTune, a very popular and nice little widget. Sadly it hasn’t seen an update since 2008 and has stopped working altogether. In light of this I found a fairly decent replacement in Harmonic. This offered similar features, but is now giving a message stating due to licensing restrictions, it can no longer supply lyrics. After all these issues I set about finding an alternative to Sing that iTune and Harmonic, and ended up finding a little gem going by the name of TunesTEXT. Made by Cyan Works, this widget not only finds and adds lyrics to iTunes, it does it VERY quickly indeed.

The great thing about TunesTEXT is that it also searches and adds lyrics to iTunes automatically, without having to launch Dashboard with every change of song. Not only that but it also has a built in iTunes controller and lyrics Editor, so you can easily make adjustments or choose from multiple sources. Overall this is a great little Widget, that I would highly recommend.

I’ve had my Rustler VXL for about a year now and have been content running it on a 7-cell 8.4v Ni-HM 4300mAh Battery Pack. With the correct gearing this was good to take the truck up to about 45mph. Well the battery has been slowly dying over the past couple of months and I was barely able to get 5 minutes runtime out of it in the end. So I decided enough was enough and bought myself a 3-cell Li-Po 11.1v 4000mAh Pack from eBay. The only trouble is, when I tried to test it out, I found the battery didn’t fit in the tray, it was slightly too long. Also, the wiring comes out the side of a Li-Po pack, not the centre, another problem needing to be solved. So here is what I did.

Tools needed

Dremel
File
Safety glasses
Steady hand
Patience

1. I used a mixture of the Dremel drill type cutting bit and a routing bit to attack the chassis with. First up I made a slot on the side of the battery tray for the connector to pass through tidily. Use your file to smooth all the burrs off the plastic, you don’t want it nipping your battery wires.

2. Next up was the toughest part, taking a hole out of the rear bulkhead. It’d be easy to just cut the entire section out, but I wanted to leave a strut across the top, not only will this help maintain chassis rigidity, it also helps hold the battery firmly in place. Take your time with this, as it is tough to get the angle of attack right. You’ll get there in the end. Again make sure to file all the burrs off after you’ve finished.

There we are, job done! The battery I was using was a fairly tight fit, if yours isn’t I recommend putting a block of foam in the hole to prevent the battery moving about. Also it’s handy to place a strip of ribbon across the tray before you fit the battery, it helps with removal.