While Apple TV wasn't quite a market hit so far, it seems Apple won't drop the product, but do as any smart company would do with a product that sells a bit below expectations - lower the price, and add new features. Since some time will pass until we get to see the results in sales and customer satisfaction of these measures, let's see what's new in the Apple TV field!

Yesterday, during its MacWorld keynote, Steve Jobs revealed the new software for the Apple TV, allowing the rental of movies from the iTunes Store directly from their TV-set. More details about the new iTunes can be found here, so now I'll tell you about some things that I didn't wrote there...

By using the new iTunes Movie Rentals and the Apple TV, you can rent one of the 1,000 movies available by the end of next month, including over 100 HD-ones featuring 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. Obviously, no computer is required. Oh, one more thing - the HD titles are a bit more expensive, with $3.99 for library titles, and $4.99, the new ones.

While the new Apple TV, priced at $229, for the 40GB model, and $329, the 160GB one, will be launched to the public in about 2 weeks, existing owners of the older models can update their software free of any charge.

At last, it would be nice for you to know that with the new Apple TV,photos from your computer, Flickr and .Mac Web Galleries can be viewed on your TV as slideshows or screen savers as easy as possible. Is that cool, or what?

Time travel is something we all dream of, sooner or later, and it has been done and overdone in movies, but no real progress in this research field is known to the public, at this time. Anyway, if you can't travel back and forward in time, at least you can back it up. I am talking about images, videos, but especially about data backup, because Apple just announced a new device that's able to backup data easier and more efficient than before, called Time Capsule.

The idea is this - you get a Time Capsule device, and your data is automatically backed up using a wireless connection, and you can do that for more than just a computer, as long as it has Mac OS X Leopard and runs the Time Machine software.
Pretty cool, don't you think? Well, as long as the wireless connection doesn't fail, everything should be fine, in my opinion...

According to Steve Jobs, all you have to do is "Bring Time Capsule home, plug it in, click a few buttons on your Macs and voila—all the Macs in your house are being backed up automatically, every hour of every day." Since the 500GB model is priced at $299, and the 1TB one comes for $499, and both include a fully featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station, there's nothing else to add, so prepare for the Time Capsule, which is scheduled to be available in February through the Apple Store, at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.

Oh, my! It happened! Just like last year, Steve Jobs had a very interesting presentation in the opening day of the MacWorld Expo, and... no, "interesting" is not right. For me, last year's keynote was interesting, because this year's is much more. While the iPhone wasn't quite the best mobile in the world at that time, it managed to set a trend, and now, we got something that really takes your breath away: the MacBook Air, the thinnest laptop in the world!


Before getting to the Air, I have to tell you some of the more important things Steve revealed to the public, such as iPhone sales. According to Apple's CEO, they have sold 4 million iPhones so far, which means about 20,000 daily. Not bad at all, I must say, not bad at all! In the US, the iPhone "garnered almost 20 percent marketshare of smartphone market", according to Jobs(nice one, saying "20 percent of the smartphone market", and not "x percent of the mobile phone market"-that would have been more interesting to know, but I am sure it's no secret, but we'll leave it aside for now).


I'll leave "Apple TV take 2"(another big thing announced by Steve Jobs in his keynote) aside now, and get straight to what gave me a big headache today - the MacBook Air. Why? Because I love it already and I couldn't stop staring at it, without any brilliant thought on what to write about it, that's why! I don't have plans on buying one anytime soon, but the MacBook Air looks great, and I will only say a few things about it...

Pricing starts at $1799, it doesn't have an optical drive, comes with the advanced WiFi 802.11n and BlueTooth 2.1, a custom-made tiny Intel Core 2 Duo CPU at 1.6 or 1.8GHz, and its battery life is estimated to 5 hours. As you can see above, the keyboard is a full-size one, as well as the trackpad. The 13.3" widescreen display and the iSight should also sound great, but best of all - it's only 0.4-1.94 cm thin, with a weight of less than 1.5kg!


Since I could write about this new laptop until next morning, I will stop here. After all, the official page is already up, as you probably expected already, so feel free to visit it and share your opinion with us. What do you think - there's already a winner in the "best laptop of 2008" category, or we have to wait and see?

I know it may sound a bit too much, but when looking back at the previous Mac Pro, there is only one word to describe the performance of the brand new Mac Pro, introduced earlier today:"insane". Why would I use such a radical word? Here you have the reasons...

The picture above doesn't look that impressive, isn't it? Well, don't expect an Alienware-like design for the Mac Pro, because it looks pretty good the way it is too, but let's leave the aesthetics aside and get down to business: 8 CPU cores, up to 4TB of internal storage, and a price for the standard configuration starting at "only" $2,799.

To get things lined up properly, I have to tell you that the new Mac Pro uses Penryn-based Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors running at speeds up to 3.2GHz, with 12MB of L2 cache per CPU, so you will get two quad-core processors and a total of 24MB of L2 cache, while the dual-independent 1600MHz front side buses will carry data to and from up to 32GB of 800MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory. According to Apple, the above should lead to an impressive 61 percent increase in memory throughput, compared to the "old" Mac Pro.

The standard graphics card included is an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of video memory, but you can install up to four graphics cards and use no less than 8 30 inch displays, in this case...

Did you have enough? Well, my head hurts. I feel like my 3-months old dual core system is completely outdated already, but that's life... so if you want to get your hands on "the most powerful Mac ever", as Apple says, go to this page. Oh! One more thing - don't forget to prepare those 2,799 bucks...