The Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts CES in Las Vegas every year, said Thursday that the trade show will expand its Apple section from 4,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet.
CES is devoting more floorspace to Apple this year. But will Apple attend?
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)It's called the iLounge Pavilion and will be an exhibition area for products related to the Mac, iPod, and iPhone. This year, for the first time, there will also be a section for applications for use on Apple products.
The original 4,000-square-foot space sold out within days of the announced availability to retailers, developers, and accessory makers looking to exhibit their wares and services, according to the CEA. That led to the decision to expand the floor space.
After Apple announced that the 2009 MacWorld Expo in January would be its last participation in the event, speculation arose that the company might choose to appear at CES--which is held around the same time--instead.
But despite the CEA's decision to create the Apple section, first announced in January, Apple has not yet commented on whether it would participate or not. The reason that the company bowed out of MacWorld--that it doesn't really need to participate anymore--would seem to preclude a similar type of presence at CES, where it would be one of thousands of companies on display.
Happy New Year! This week we bring you a special Dialed In podcast live from CES in Las Vegas. Listen in to hear all the highlights of the show and a complete rundown of the nominees for Best of CES in the cell phones and smartphones category.
Palm's new Pre smartphone quickly emerged as one of the hottest items at the show, and you'll get Bonnie's full take on this intriguing device. And there are plenty of other nifty handsets on the show floor. Nicole got the chance to try on the LG Watch phone and Kent scooped out the new models from Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
Earlier in the week, Kent also went to the Macworld 2009 keynote sans Steven Jobs. For the most part it was a snoozer, but there was a bit of iPhone and iTunes news.
Listen now:
Download today's podcast
Best of CES cell phones nominees:
Full CES cell phones and smartphones coverage
Apple activates iTunes downloads over 3G, but with a caveat
Jasmine and Donald talk about their favorite portable audio discoveries from the 2009 Macworld Expo and the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This episode is recorded live from the CNET stage at CES 2009.
Listen now:
Download today's podcast
... Read more
Griffin Navigate is more than just an iPhone remote
Griffin Navigate is a remote with an FM radio for iPod and iPhone
(Credit: Griffin)Griffin Technology showed off the Navigate at a CES press event yesterday, though it was announced officially at Macworld several hours before. The Navigate may seem like just an ordinary iPod remote, and indeed it can be used that way. A nice bonus is that you can also use it with the iPhone, which could ...
Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
Griffin unveils SmartTalk Bluetooth
Griffin SmartTalk Bluetooth headset
(Credit: Griffin Technology)Griffin Technology released the SmartTalk Bluetooth headset yesterday in conjunction with Macworld Expo 2009, marking the first ever Bluetooth headset from the company known for its iPod and iPhone accessories. The SmartTalk Bluetooth headset has a dual microphone design that promises great noise cancellation, with the ability to tell the difference between your voice and background noise. It also offers human voice confirmations ...
Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
Blue Microphone's Mikey iPod accessory was a surprise find at Macworld 2009.
(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)The Macworld show floor can induce deja vu for habitual attendees. From a hardware perspective, often it's the same vendors offering the same products, with slight variations from year to year. Despite the gloomy economic outlook, however, I found a surprising amount of new products on the show floor (or, at least new to me). Here are the highlights.
Add new songs to your iPhone over 3G.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)Though the addition of DRM-free music is grabbing the most iTunes headlines, there was more music news at the Macworld 2009 keynote on Tuesday.
Apple Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller also announced that beginning Tuesday iPhone users will be able sample and wirelessly download iTunes tracks over AT&T's 3G network or EDGE. Previously, iTunes song downloads, unlike apps, were available only over a Wi-Fi connection.
The process works relatively well, though we encountered a couple of hiccups. Like with the iTunes Apps store, you must use Wi-Fi or a wired connection to your computer to download songs over 10MB. When we tried downloading a longer song, we received a warning message advising as such. During our first download, our connection was interrupted once. We were able to reconnect and continue the download
We tried downloading a 6.4MB song over 3G. It took about one minute and 15 seconds, which is about the same as a Wi-Fi download. We then downloaded a 7.2MB over EDGE. As expected, it was painfully slow--after all, EDGE basically is dial-up speed. It took about 20 minutes to get our song, which is too long to bother in our opinion.
Shure's new SE115 headphones are as tough as they are pretty.
(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)Shure unveiled its new SE115 line of in-ear headphones today at Macworld 2009. Aside from being colorful (offered in red, blue, or pink), the SE115 share the same design as the SE110 headphones we reviewed last year, with the exception of the audio-driver technology, which has changed from a balanced armature driver to a dynamic driver.
Shure was nice enough to let me try on a pair, and the sound was undeniably beefier than I recall hearing on the SE110 but a bit lacking in the crispness associated with the balanced armature driver found in its predecessor. I only listened to the Shure SE115 for a few songs from my Zune 80 (yes, I brought a Zune to Macworld), so I'll reserve judgment until I get to spend more time with them. My first impressions, however, weren't earth-shattering.
Sonically, I think Apple's $79 dual-driver in-ear headphones offer better detail and overall balance. However, nothing can beat Shure when it comes to construction quality.
Still, at $99, the Shure SE115 are great for bass-heads and offer the same awesome build quality and professional cabling you'd find on any of its higher-end models. You also get Shure's unique "black foam" ear-tip fit kit and a generous two-year warranty.
With its launch of iPhoto 09, Apple has begun showing some reasons why it's worth enduring the hassle of geotagging your photos.
It's generally not easy right now to label your photos with information about where you took the pictures--the process usually is done with special software to marry the photos with location data taken from a separate GPS receiver.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, demonstrated geotagging in iPhoto 09 at Macworld 2009.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, demonstrated what you can do with iPhoto at the Macworld 2009 keynote Tuesday.
iPhoto 09 works best with photos that already have been tagged. That's getting more common, as GPS hardware support becomes less of a rarity. For example, Nikon's Coolpix P6000 has a built-in GPS receiver, and Nikon has begun selling its GP-1 GPS receiver, which can plug into its SLR's flash mount so location data is embedded in the photo. Apple's iPhone can geotag its own photos, and camera manufacturers say GPS support in cameras has become a matter of when, not if.
But the software also can help you tag your own images. Clicking a photo flips it over, letting you type in a location, then showing the spot using a map. (Google supplies back-end mapping services). Helpfully, iPhoto then can spread that location data to other photos with similar time stamps, and they can be bundled together into a group called an event.
OK, but what can you do?
Once you have geotagged photos, what can you do with them?
For one thing, sift through them geographically using iPhotos' new Places interface. Viewing an iPhoto event can show an associated collection of pushpins on a map, and clicking each pin shows the photo.
For another, you can search for photos based on where you took them, not on whatever filing system you might use. iPhoto can handle geographic hierarchies, so if you labeled a photo with "Eiffel Tower," it'll find it with a search for "France" or "Paris."
... Read morePre-Macworld buzz suggested that both a new Mac Mini and a 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro laptop were in the offing from Apple Tuesday on the hardware front.
It seems that the moldy old Mac Mini will stick around for at least a little longer, but the 17-inch MacBook Pro did indeed receive an update to the new all-aluminum chassis Apple debuted on its smaller 13-inch MacBook and 15-inch MacBook Pro this past October.
Along with the new chassis, an improved display, and a glass trackpad (all things we've seen before), Apple has brought a few other changes to its highest-end laptop:
The 17-inch MacBook Pro gets a new chassis with improved display technology.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)Glossy and matte display options
The new 15-inch MacBook Pro came with a glossy screen that many people found too reflective. Apple will now offer a $50 matte finish option for the 17-inch MacBook Pro, for those who'd rather do without all of that extra light. We're happy about this option, and we expect that many others will be as well.
