books

A while ago, Western Digital announced new lines of My Book single volume external hard drives that offer 2TB of storage. It was only a matter of time before the company introduced its new dual-drive My Book Studio Edition II external hard drive with 4TB of storage.

The new drive, like its previous versions, is designed to work with Mac computers and comes with most connection options found in an external hard drive. The My Book Studio Edition II comes with USB 2.0, FireWire, and eSATA and is preformatted for Macs and compatible with Time Machine, the automatic backup … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--The big knock on Apple--whether or not it's always been accurate--is that its products are more expensive than most of its competitors.

But in the keynote speech Monday that opened Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, it became clear the company is tackling the price question head on.

The best example of this new attitude is the decision to keep the 8GB iPhone 3G, but sell it at $99. That was the most aggressive price move it made Monday. But Apple was price conscious in other ways, too: It upgraded its 13-inch unibody MacBook to specs worthy of its … Read more

Editors' Note (April 13, 2010): Apple has updated its line of MacBook Pros with new Intel processors and improved Nvidia graphics. See CNET's coverage of the Spring 2010 MacBook Pros for more information.

Amid all the buzz about Apple's new iPhone 3G S, MacBook fans were also treated to an impressive set of component upgrades and price drops across Apple's laptop lines. With select systems changing names, others changing specs, or sometimes both, it can be a little confusing to get a clear picture of the current MacBook family. To that end, we've rounded up the key spec, price, and feature changes in one handy spot.

MacBook, 13-inch $999 Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 9400M

This is Apple's basic white plastic MacBook, and the last one left to carry the standalone MacBook name. It's always been a good deal for under $1,000, although the new entry price on the 13-inch aluminum models makes this less clear-cut.

Until today, it was the only 13-inch model with FireWire, and it remains the only one with a removable battery and a non-LED display.

MacBook Pro, 13-inch $1,199 Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 9400M

$1,499 Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 9400M

Previously known as the MacBook, the basic 13-inch aluminum unibody laptop has been promoted to the "Pro" series, and with good cause--the line between these and the 15-inch Pro models has been very thin since they moved to the all-metal construction and added GeForce 9400M graphics.

More importantly, the 13-inch unibody systems have regained their FireWire ports, and have added (drum roll, please...) an SD card slot. We've been bugging Apple for years to add this basic feature, and digital photographers everywhere are no doubt celebrating. … Read more

Erica Ogg reports from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, where she just live-blogged a whole roster of announcements, including a new iPhone, and updates to MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Snow Leopard, and Safari.

Today's stories:

Palm Pre's big day

Live blog: WWDC 2009 keynote

Ahoy! Pirate Party gets berth in European Parliament

Storage software industry takes a revenue hit

Report: China to require censorship software

Two cool search start-ups: Wowd and Yebol

N.Y. Internet Week: All in the same boat

On Monday, the Apple MacBook Air reached a new price low as a wave of sub-$1,000 ultrathin laptops get set to break onto the market.

The ultrathin, trend-setting 13-inch notebook made a steep descent from its rarefied, luxury-laptop pricing altitudes. The top-of-the-line Air with a 128GB solid-state drive fell $700 in price to $1,799 from $2,499 and gained a slightly faster 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The new prices are now posted on Apple's Web site.

The lower-end version with a 120GB hard disk drive fell to $1,499--the lowest price to date for … Read more

Not to be left out, the MacBook's been updated too, and it's no longer just a MacBook. Following in the wake of the 15-inch MacBook Pro updates, the 13-inchers will also be called MacBook Pros (because as Phil Schiller noted onstage, "At what point isn't this just a MacBook Pro?") The mid-range unibody aluminum laptops launched last October now have upgraded color screens, SD card slots, FireWire 800 ports, and backlit keyboards across the board. Prices start at $1,199, $100 less than before for the low-end aluminum MacBook, for an upgraded 2.26 GHz … Read more

Not the biggest news from today's Apple WWDC keynote, but the MacBook laptop line has gotten a few noteworthy spec bumps. We've already seen recent tweaks to the popular (and relatively budget-priced) $999 white MacBook, so now it's time for the aluminum 13, 15, and 17-inch models to follow suit.

First up is a revamped 15-inch MacBook Pro. Built into the same unibody construction as the current model, this new Pro promises improved battery life with a new "revolutionary" li-polymer battery that offers up to seven hours of life. These new batteries, according to Apple, … Read more

Updated at 6:45 p.m. PDT with additional discussion about OS X local search.

I once was a God-fearing Windows user. But when an Apple shrine, uh, store opened in my area, I began to ask myself the age-old question that has confounded even the greatest biblical prophets: Is the Mac better?

I avoided the Mac for years for the usual reason cited by the Windows faithful: a dearth of hardware and software. (The so-called Mac tax was never really an issue for me.) That said, I won't go into a broad platform critique because I risk rehashing Windows-versus-Mac religious arguments that have been repeated millions of times for (digital-age) eons. (Besides, I'll leave that faith-based debate to the digerati of the world.)

Suffice to say, I now use a MacBook full time. Though, in the spirit of complete disclosure, I do have a Vista-based HP tower that I still use when there's something I absolutely can't do on the Mac. And, no, I have not gone the Boot Camp or virtual machine route yet.

So, without getting into an unwieldy philosophical argument, there are some nuts-and-bolts things that make the transition a challenge (and it's different for everyone, as every user has different needs.)

And one more disclaimer: I'm writing this from the perspective of a Mac neophyte/new user. Not as a seasoned Macophile that can instantly troubleshoot issues as they pop up.

Docking stations (lack thereof): This is a biggie. I had grown attached to the convenience of Hewlett-Packard docking stations. Apple should have connectors for docking stations (or port-replicators) built into MacBooks. The ease of popping an HP business laptop--which I had been using for years--in and out of a docking station cannot be overstated.

Microsoft Entourage: This is not the Windows Outlook equivalent. In a word, it's slow. In two words, very slow. (Note: I can't use the OS X "Mail" client because it can't run the email programs that I use.)

Web compatibility: All things should be equal here. But they're not. Like many people, I use both Safari and FireFox. Last week, there was a live video stream that, while it loaded on my MacBook Air, wouldn't run. The applet was there but it wasn't streaming. I didn't have time to figure out why it wasn't streaming. I just needed it to work. Out of desperation, I tried it on the Vista-based HP tower. It streamed immediately. In my book, that's a problem. And generally, on many Web sites that I use, Windows Media Player (that is, WMP v.11) is more adept at streaming video than the applets that come standard on the Mac OS X platform.

OS X local search: OS X local search is great (e.g., Spotlight) but it won't let me exclusively search a folder full of JPEG files. This issue was validated by a Mac "Genius" at my local Apple Store who admitted it was "odd." Let me repeat, an Apple Genius verified that I could not do this. Of course, I can find these files a dozen other ways but there's an application I use everyday that would be a lot easier to use if I could search JPEG files exclusively in that folder.

(Update: After a second visit to my local Apple Store and a separate discussion about changing the user short name--which the Genius did, as this process is a little tricky--I can now do JPEG searches on one of my MacBooks. I do not know how this came to be fixed, however, as it was an unintended consequence.) … Read more

The official Google Books blog has a fun post on how to scan your books into the service's "My Books" feature by using a USB barcode scanner. The My Books section of Google Books is similar to the popular Mac application Delicious Library in letting you keep a list of all your titles in a digital card catalog that can be shared with others. Of course you can do this without the USB barcode scanner simply by searching for the book, but Google's Matt Cutts makes it look like fun:

As Cutts mentions in the video, … Read more