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No idea what Apple have planned, but I don’t suspect it will be anything major. Maybe a nice iMac refresh eh? I highly doubt it.

[Update]

Well it wasn’t too exciting afterall. Apple released updates to a few of it’s Pro apps, namely Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Server, and Logic Studio. Also, available in August will be Logic Express 9, a cut down version of Studio.

It’s been confirmed tonight that Michael Jackson has died, aged 50. Sad times for a true pop legend. Jackson was taken into Hospital in LA in deep coma after reportedly suffering a heart attack.

Although recently MJ’s career has come off the rails, after a series of child abuse allegations, there is no arguing that this man redefined the pop genre. Rest in peace Jacko.

If you’ve ever owned an Apple Mighty Mouse for an extended period of time, there’s no doubt you’ll have experienced the annoyance of the scroll ball refusing to respond. This mainly effects the downward scrolling, which is even more frustrating as it’s probably the most used movement (hmmm maybe that’s why it stops working?) Anyway, the simple reason for all of this is a build up of gunk on the tiny axis scroll pins. Now Apple didn’t make it easy to get into these mice, they’ve glued a bezel on the bottom that needs to be carefully removed before you can get into it.

What you will need

Small Philips Screwdriver

Small blade (be very careful)

Cleaning alcohol

Double sided sticky tape

Open up

1. The first part is the toughest, getting that damn bezel off! Some are easier than others though. Apple thought it’d be a good idea to glue it on at ten various points (pictured below) Thanks, Apple.

I found it best to start from the corner where the cable comes in at the front (pictured below). I managed to slide my knife in and work an opening. Be very patient, do not try and gouge the bezel off you’ll end up either snapping it, or injuring yourself. Take your time and try and work the blade in at the glue points, eventually you should be able to crack it off.

2. Once the bezel is off it gets a bit easier, next it’s simply matter of levering the inner part of the mouse out from the top casing. If you look carefully you will see two points where the mouse is clipped to swivel joints (pictured below). Gently lever the inner part out and it should come free quite easily.

2. Now you’re in, be careful as there are two ribbon cables that don’t leave much room to maneuver (pictured below). These are held in by push down clips. Gently pry them up with your knife and the cables will come out freely.

3. Once the two halves are seperated, use your screwdriver to remove the 3 screws holding the Scroll ball assembley in place (pictured below).

4. Once removed it gets a bit fiddly, unclip the white cap that encompasses the Scroll ball with your knife (pictured below). Everything will probably fall out so make sure you keep an eye out of for the four roller pins. It’s a good idea to take note of the pin arrangement at this point, handy for refitting.

5. These are the culprits of your Scrolling nightmare (highlighted below). The four pins that pick up the Scroll ball’s movements and translate them into a digital signal. They do this using tiny magnets on the end of each one, which are picked up by four tiny sensors. The magnets make it fiddly to put it all back together as they just love jumping at each other! Anyway, clean all the gunk off the pins, there’s usually bit of fluff wrapped around in the crevices, I found using a bit of alcohol (white spirits for instance) was a great way of getting them looking new.

6. The hole in the top case is quite often filled with gunk aswell. Make sure you give that the once over before refitting as it’d make the whole process a bit pointless otherwise

7. Once you’re all done, refit everything in reverse order (ye ye always the case). Once you get to the final part of the jigsaw, namely the bezel, you don’t really want to glue it back on because chances are you’re going to need to clean the thing again in a couple of months. The solution I’ve always used is to dot some little squares of strong double sided tape around most of the glue points. This holds the bezel on nice and firm, but still makes it fairly easy to remove in the future.

Ok so there we have it, a guide to cleaning your Apple Mighty Mouse. Even though I used the Wired version for this guide, it’s exactly the same process for the Wireless version, all that’s different is you need to take the batteries out first! Enjoy.

With WWDC looming, more and more rumours have been surfacing about the likely introduction of a third generation iPhone. It does indeed seem the case, as it was last year, that we will see a new iPhone today. So what can we look forward to? Well, here’s a list of some of the features most touted.

1. 3.2 MP Auto-focus Camera – one of the biggest complaints about previous iPhones was the lack of quality from it’s 2 MP sensor, this should all change with the introduction of Auto-focus. While many feel that 3.2 MP is already very dated, I see it being adequate for my needs. [Screenshot]
2. Digital Compass – a magnetometer in the iPhone can be used to show exactly which direction you are pointing your phone. Could be a handy addition for hikers etc, not to mention app integration. [Screenshot]
3. Faster CPU, GPU, and more RAM – It seems likely the iPhone will receive quite a significant speed bump this time around. Expect the latest ARM Cortex-A8 processor, which has been used in the brand new Palm Pre. Also expected is the use of the latest Imagination GPU, and twice the RAM over previous models. Quite how App marketing will work I’m not sure, as there are bound to be Apps made that will require this hardware to run them.
4. iChat video – A feature that was heavily rumored before the iPhone 3G was released, stories have died down a bit since then, and have only been shown in fake renders of a new case. For me this is one of the least likely hardware additions. But it would be nice to see. I imagine if it did happen, we’ll see Phil Schiller calling Steve at home to wish him all the best! [Screenshot]
5. Dedicated Camera Button – In some of the leaked case pictures there appears to be a notch in the bottom right corner. Many believe this will be used as a dedicated shutter button for the camera. Anyone who’s used the current iPhone for taking pictures will know, the touch screen button is sometimes fiddly. [Screenshot]
6. Four models inc. 16GB/32GB – There have been rumors of 4 models ranging from 4GB to 32GB. If true, I can see the introduction of an iPhone nano using the features of the existing iPhone 3G, but in a smaller housing. This could come in 4GB/8GB versions. Then we have the newer iPhone, with video recording, digital camera enhancements, digital compass etc coming in 16GB/32GB variants. [Screenshot]
7. Light up Apple Logo – Now this is something I’d love to see, akin to the Apple laptops, a light up logo would be uber cool. Imagine if they even integrated it as an LED flash for the camera? Now we’re talking!

Well that pretty much all of the rumours taken care of. I just got this interesting picture form the UMPCFever.com website.

The rumour mill just keeps on rolling, and I supspect it will do until we find out tonight. As usual, the live action starts at 6pm BST here in the UK.

Just a quick post to show everyone this very cool sign my friend Steven bought me a couple of weeks back. He got it from eBay and cost about £10 I think. Once lit up it looks very nice indeed. I just have to find somewhere to hang it up now!

I am starting this petition for the BBC to take note of the fact their current commentator for the Formula 1 campaign isn’t good enough. After reading several complaints on forums online, I have come to the decision the BBC needs to replace Jonathan Legard with former ITV commentator James Allen, or someone from his ilk.

Sign the petition here

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/f1legard/petition.html

Thanks

Oh dear, it seems the rumors of an Apple Netbook just won’t go away. Last week we heard reports of Apple buying up 10″ screens from China, and today it’s a Russian magazine supplying us with these apparent pictures depicting a ‘MacBook mini’. Both MacRumors and 9to5Mac are running the story, but no word on whether they are fake or not. There is even a supposed spec sheet aswell:

- 10.4″ WXGA display.
- 1280 x 768 pixel with LED backlighting.
- NVIDIA MCP79
- Intel Atom Z740 1.83GHz with 1MB L2 cache.
- 2GB DDR3-800.
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
- 64GB Solid State Drive.
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n
- 1 x USB 2.0
- 1 x Mini Display Port
- Battery Li-Ion 5100mA

Personally if Apple released that very machine tomorrow, I’d be all over it like a rash! The Samsung NC10 would be straight on eBay!!

Update

It’s been pretty much confirmed as a fake (I knew it deep down)

If you want to install OS X (hackintosh) on your Samsung NC-10 Netbook, then you must have realised by now that neither the WiFi card nor Ethernet card inside it are compatible with the Mac operating system. The only option you have is to swap the WiFi card out for a model the OS X can work with. I chose the Dell 1490 which uses the Broadcom chipset. These are readily available on eBay for around £15.

What you will need

Spludger – if you’ve never heard of one, it’s a plastic tool used to open devices such as iPods and iBooks (although you can use something flat and smooth instead)

Small Philips Screwdriver

OS X comaptible WiFi Card

Open up

Once you have your WiFi card you’re going to want to swap it out, this isn’t to difficult, although it can seem that way at first. Just follow these steps and you should be fine.

1. Turn the Netbook off, unplug the Power cord, and remove the Battery.

2. Place it upside down on a soft surface (you want to protect that finish right?)

3. Proceed to remove all 15 screws from the bottom of the machine, including the Memory access door screw.

4. Once these are removed you will not notice much other than the keyboard feels a little loose. This is where you must be careful

5. Take a spludger, or anything relatively smooth and flat (I used the bottle opener on my Swiss Army Knife). I found starting in the bottom left corner (near the two USB ports) to be best. Gentle pry the case apart with your spludger, there are numerous clips holding the case together. It’s easier to slide it along the gap, rather than try to lever it open, less chance of leaving marks.

6. Move your spludger around the casing cracking open all the clips. You’ll feel the case is nearly ready to come off.

7. The last part holding the case together is four clips along the back section, where the battery fits. Gentle work you spludger in here and crack the four clips open.

8. The bottom should now come free and you will see the bottom of the Motherboard, housing the fan, and in the corner, the WiFi card.

9. Unplug the two antennae cables from the WiFi card, then remove the single black screw holding it in place.

10. Once removed, replace the card with your own, rescrew and reconnect the cables.

11. Clip the bottom case back on, making sure all the clips are seated properly. Turn the laptop over and make sure the keyboard is clipped in properly.

12. Replace all 15 fifteen screws to the bottom on the Netbook.

13. Refit Battery, and power on the machine. Once if loads Windows you will be greeted with a Driver install screen.

14. I found the easiest way through this part was to connect the Netbook up  via Ethernet, then choose to search for the Driver online. Windows will then find and install your WiFi card and you’re ready to rock!

Thanks for reading, I’m going to attempt installing OS X on this baby next, so check back for a progress update!

When I first saw the deal O2 were offering I was very tempted to take them up on it right away. For £29 a month they were offering Mobile Broaband with a free Laptop. Now I didn’t need a Laptop as I already have my MacBook. But what I was interested in was a Netbook. I thought to myself, no I don’t need one, but I sure would like one (isn’t it always the same)

Anyway, I finally gave in, and after thrashing out a deal with O2, I got the price down to £22 a month. Add to that Quidco were offering £100 cashback if you ordered through their site, and it suddenly felt like a bargain!

I’ve always looked at Netbooks online and thought of them as being somewhat cheap looking. If only Apple would make a Netbook, I kept telling myself. With this deal though, I thought to myself, even if I don’t like it, I could always just sell it. I could then just use the Mobile Broadband Dongle on my MacBook, so I wouldn’t be losing out. Well as it turns out, I do like it, a lot.

Build Quality & Design

Ok so the build quality isn’t going to win any awards, but it is a very rugged little thing. There’s no flex in the casing when you pick it up, neither does it creak like many Laptops do. The screen hinge has a nice feel to it. I especially like the little rubber feet underneath, they really grip the machine to your desk. The edge of the unit sports a nice chrome effect bezel that flows around the front and sides, then makes another appearance on the hinges. The power button is accommodated in the hinge on the right hand side, similar to a new Apple Wireless Keyboard. When the unit is powered on this switch glows blue, a very nice effect that works great with the chrome. The underside of the unit is very basic, many vents and bumps, a memory access door, and the battery latch. The battery fills the void between the screen and the base, a nice touch, as I don’t very much like the Netbooks which have a great big gap there.

Screen & Storage

The 10.2″ screen is a joy to behold, it’s an LED backlit jobby with a 1024 x 600 resolution. Most websites I’ve visited fit the width fine. The screen is lovely and bright aswell, easily on par with my MacBooks, and actually surpases it in a brightly lit room (that hurt to say) Another area where it trumps my MacBook is viewing angle. The new Unibody MacBooks are known to have a terrible viewing angle compared to their big sister, the MacBook Pro. The Samsung easily beats my MacBook here, with an excellent viewing angle. Storage wise the model I got has a 160GB Hard Drive, this is a lot of storage for a Netbook, more than a MacBook Air. I don’t mind the fact it isn’t an SSD either!

Connectivity & WiFi

There’s a fair few options here for you to connect peripherals. The left side of the machine houses the Charger point, Ethernet port, and two USB 2.0 ports (from back to front) On the right hand side we have VGA out, single USB 2.0 port, Microphone, and finally Headphones (again back to front). At the front there’s an SD Card slot, and a bunch of blue LED status lights. I’ve found the SD reader to be very handy, the 16GB SDHC card I use for my Kodak Zi6 is picked up effortlessly. I haven’t had any problems using the WiFi either, it may only be G-spec, but it offers great range and good speed.

Keyboard & Trackpad

The keyboard is very good for a device of this size, Samsung state it’s 93% full size. All I know is it’s nice enough to type on and has good tactile feedback. One thing that catches me out is the ‘A’ key, it isn’t as far in from the left as my MacBook so I’m constantly hitting ‘S’ instead! Onto the trackpad, this is possibly the only major gripe with the unit. Size wise it just isn’t big enough. There are virtual scroll bars on the vertical and horizontal axis to aid with browsing. The trouble with this is, it leaves very little room left to navigate the cursor. I found a great little hack for this though. It enables two-finger scrolling, thus you can disable the virtual scroll bars, freeing up precious trackpad space!

Battery Life

The Sammy comes with a 6-cell battery as standard. Most Netbooks make you fork out extra for one of these. With a full charge expect a class topping 6 hours of battery life. Now I’m not saying you’ll get 6 hours of watching a Movie, or browsing YouTube, but for general Web Browsing, Email, Blog posting etc, it easily makes it over 5 hours for me.

Performance

Spec wise this Netbook uses the same sort of hardware that many on the market today do. That is, an Intel Atom 1.6GHz N270 Processor with Intel 945GSE Integrated Graphics. While the GPU isn’t very good, this machine is still nippy enough for most multimedia needs. Watching Standard Def movies or streaming YouTube videos is pretty effortless. I upgraded the 1GB PC6400 RAM module in mine to a 2GB version from Play.com, only cost £14.49 and was well worth it. I was actually surprised when I tried running a 720p trailer from the Apple website, it dropped a few frames here and there, but was still watchable. Lower it down to 480p and it’s absolutely fine. One thing that bugs me though is the tearing, quite noticeable with HD movies or if you run a game. I guess after all’s said and done, these are not Gaming/HD machines. Look out for my Podcast when I launch it later this week, first episode is this very machine running Half-Life 2!

Conclusion

Overall I am delighted with this Netbook. On the way to work in the morning it’s the type of device you can just quickly throw it in your bag. I can see myself taking it to work with me nearly everyday because it’s so light and convienient. The excellent battery life means you barely have to worry about carrying a charger around with you. To top it all off you also get a 1.3MP webcam, which seems of reasonable quality, built in stereo speakers, and a microphone. The speakers aren’t the loudest I’ve ever heard, but they do the job. If you’re in the market for a Netbook then you’d do a lot worse than pick up a Samsung NC10.

I’ve been looking for some new Speakers to hook up to my Mac mini for a while now. Trouble is, finding some at the right price, that fit in with the Alu look, but also sound great, is no mean feat. In the end I was looking too hard, what I needed was right in front of my nose. My good friend Sam over at Fruit Bytes was already using these Altec Lansing Speakers, and promptly recommended them to me.

I looked at a few places online and couldn’t seem to find many retailers selling them. Then it dawned on me these models were over a year old! But after a bit more digging, I found that Play.com were selling them for £29.99, just the sort of price I was looking to fork out. Delivery was very speedy to be fair, usually Play take 3-5 days to deliver DVD’s etc, but I think because of the size and weight, the Speakers were sent by Parcelforce 24! I was happy.

Not too many pics to show but head over to my Flickr page to check out the unboxing process.

Waxing Lyrical

Once I got them unpacked I tried them out with my MacBook first. My brother was round at the time and he instantly said “They sound quality, how much did you pay for them?!” When I told him the price he asked me to order him a set to use with his portable DVD player. I then took them to their new resting place, in my bedroom. Once setup I immediately felt the difference over the old Apple Pro USB Speakers I had been using. Finally there was bass, and plenty of it! I found myself turning the Subwoofer down because I know I’d end up with complaints from the neighbours. I have a couple of Movies in my iTunes collection that are very low volume. With my old Apple Speakers, this left the film unwatchable as I just couldn’t hear the speech properly. Now with my shiny new Altec Lansings’ I can just crank them up and enjoy.

Downsides

The fact they don’t come with a remote control might be a problem for some, but not for me. I set them up so I have a good range of volume adjustment using the Apple remote, works great. Another thing that annoyed me a bit when I was first testing them out, these things don’t like standing up! They were constantly falling over as I was adjusting the wire placement. Thankfully though, once left alone, they manage to keep their composure.

Conclusion

Overall I’m very pleased with these Speakers. I bought them on a reccomendation, when historically I prefer to hear my Speakers in the flesh. Gladly though, they covered all my initial requirements. If anyone fancies a pair of Apple Pro USB Speakers then gimme an email before they go on eBay!