Gadgetory

what's happening Brian song here and welcome to the apple byte it's all the good and bad stuff inside the world of Apple so let's get to the show now it's a big week this week for all the Apple fanboys I even saw two grown men cry about the news and unfortunately I'm away at comic-con 2011 but we want to showcase some of the goodies so let's check out what everyone has been waiting for the new macbook airs i'm dan ackerman and we are here taking a very first look at the latest version of apple's 13-inch macbook air now physically from the outside you open up the box just looks a heck of a lot like the previous macbook air and in fact physically it's pretty much the same box except this guy has a backlit keyboard something that was in the original air mission from the second generation now back here again and the other big change is i'm going to show you right here on the side this display port jack right here in the back is now a thunderbolt compatible jack so that you can hook up a display to it but you can also hook up thunderbolt peripherals if you happen to run across any there a couple of hard drives and Apple is going to have a really nice-looking big laptop oriented monitor later on in the summer that you can actually connect this directly to and that's going to have an ethernet port and a firewire and some other Jack's that through that single Thunderbolt connection you can all access from your laptop under the hood the biggest change with this latest generation of macbook air systems is the move from Intel's Core 2 Duo CPUs to the latest second generation core i series that's a two-generation leap for the processor you've got core i5 in the 11 inch and the 13 inch macbooks and in both of those you can actually upgrade to the faster core i7 processors these are all the low voltage versions and you've got to start with the more expensive upgraded based models for both of those in order to get that core i7 processor as it is just start out with a 128 gig solid-state drive in the 13 inch version and we're gigs of ram you can upgrade that to a 256 gig solid-state drive which should be big enough for just about everybody once you start doing that your macbook air can get a little bit expensive we've still got the same 16 x 10 display they haven't moved to 16 by 9 yet on the 13 inch models the big gigantic multitrack touchpad is the same they have however added for the OS 10 lion operating system upgrade that comes with this a bunch of new gestures that took us a little while to get used to but a bunch of them are actually pretty useful and you're going to have to train yourself to use those instead of some of the previous versions of these multi-touch gestures so here's a quick peek at some of the new gestures are going to have to get used to in order to use a new macbook air or really any mac laptop that has the OS 10 lion operating system upgrade the two finger scroll still work still works really great going up and down web pages now in order to move a window around it used to double tap here and move it much like you would on a windows pc now you just take three fingers and then you can move your windows around very easily just like that the fourth finger gesture still gives you a big overview they call this a mission control view now and shows you all the different apps you have open and lets you set up alternative desktops the biggest change for me was getting back to your desktop you take your thumb and three fingers and then you pinched out from there and that exposed to your desktop you reverse that to go back the other way and you do that reverse again and that takes you to what they call the launch pad which looks very much like your iOS your iPad or iPhone collection of apps and these are all the apps that either come pre-installed or you get through the apple app store and then you just pinch the other way to get back to your regular desktop so following the traditional Apple upgrade cycle what they've done is they've kept the price is the same 1299 and 1599 for the two different base models of the 13-inch macbook air while upgrading the components inside most notably of course that core i5 processor and the Thunderbolt port i'm dan ackerman and that is Apple's new 13-inch MacBook Air you guys I cannot wait to make out with that thing and I can even see its face in the dark with a battle-ax keyboard it's hot now i also want to mind tongue wrestling with a lion that's Mac os10 line for you disgusting sickos out there seriously well it's here so let's take a look with jason parker hello everyone Apple is finally unleashed the lion that's Mac os10 line and it's available today at the mac app store but is it worth the upgrade for everyone i'm jason parker from cnet and this is a first look at Apple's newest operating system Mac OS 10 line we have the chance to sit down and check out many of the new features and we're impressed with what we've seen so far to get started multi-touch gestures figure prominently in Mac OS 10 lion letting you swipe pinch and tap your way through many of the operating systems newest features for example a three-finger swipe upwards brings up the new mission control where you can see everything that's currently running along with associated windows that have the running apps icon at the bottom simply click on any window to bring it to the front as another example in Safari you'll now be able to go back or forward through your history on a browser tab with a two-finger swipe all the multi-touch gestures feel very natural and apple says it's because they've added new more responsive animations notice how you can swipe the safari page exactly as much or as little as you want Mac os10 lion now offers full screen apps a feature many windows users have seen as a major disappointment in the mac OS over the years now you can click on the diagonal arrows icon in the upper right corner of a window to quickly switch to full screen once in full screen you're three finger horizontal swipe switches between full screen apps and desktops speaking of desktops the spaces feature has been elegantly worked into Mission Control as well if you want to create a second desktop just click and drag a window or set of windows to the icon at the upper right now with a three finger horizontal swipe you'll be able to switch between open apps and newly created desktops oh and also new to lion one further three-finger swipe to the right now gets you to the widget dashboard it's no secret that iOS devices have been a huge success for Apple and along with touch screen features some iOS interface elements snuck into line as well launchpad gives you another option for quickly showing all apps and it looks just like the way apps are laid out in the iOS bring up launchpad by hitting the icon in the dock or by doing a three finger and thumb pinch motion just like the iphone you can click and hold an app to get into jiggle mode then either move apps around or create folders by dropping a nap on another apps icon you still have the option to search for apps in the finder and still can create an application folder in the dock but if you like that iOS look launch pad is the way to go one of the biggest upgrades for Lion is one of the most important apps of all mail Apple's email app now the layout closely resembles the email experience on the iPad with your message lists on the left and message content on the right the new mail app now has a favorites bar for one click access to your most used folders you can still do it the old way if you want however by hitting the show button in the upper left to bring up the standard folder structure also just like iOS devices you'll now be able to view message threads as conversations a number next to the message shows how many messages have been sent in a conversation once clicked each conversation shows separate boxes for each reply that's both nice-looking and makes it less confusing to quickly read through searching email got a huge upgrade as well now when you type in a name for example mail offers suggestions based on what's in your inbox but even better they created search tokens when you click a suggestion it creates a token this way you can refine your search by first creating a token of the name then at a month say then a subject and get only the mail that came from that person in that month and with that subject this will make searching for that mystery email much easier than before apple also made it easier to share files with those nearby where once you needed to email or send a file by a chat client you'll now be able to use airdrop simply choose airdrop from the finder and you'll be able to see nearby users where you can drag and drop a file to their avatar we have one word for this finally even though the mac app store was introduced as an update and Snow Leopard it's important to talk about here because it's the only place you can buy and download line for 2999 unfortunately this means that if you skipped over snow leopard you'll still have to buy it for 29 in order to get the Mac App Store to download lion we can see why Apple did it this way but frankly it doesn't seem fair to those who chose not to x snow leopard overall Mac os10 lion is a solid upgrade that comes with more than 250 new features we can't list them all here but be sure to check out our full review at download com this is jason parker for cnet thanks for watching our first look at mac OS x see you next time so that's some sweet news and we'll talk about all the other things they announced later next we show but the only thing that could make this week better would be if I was sent to the biggest baddest pop culture sci-fi fantasy comic book convention which I am alright let's check out some of those emails I asked for and everything here is fair game Thomas bossio rights in with I got a request can you please share your favorite flavor of pop-tarts thanks cherry Thomas has to be cherry but our building only has strawberry but one thing is we also have 25 cents ilysm that's really the only reason why I wanted to work here now Andre Leo race or rice she asked yo be on the last episode you said that you know that Mac os10 10.7 s release date but you couldn't tell or you would get fired now the only way you can know is if you work for Apple so do you work for Apple of course I work for Apple you know there's a reason why they don't want me to be at the press conferences and if you've watched the show clearly you know that all I do is suck their teeth with a segment like the bad apple or calling them ID ox you know they're more than happy to call me as one of their employees but I did work for them in retail years ago as a photo model I know pretty hot now our last email comes from Richie limb hi Brian I've been wanting to get a macbook pro should i buy one now now Apple just rolled out their new macbook pros at the end of februari we typically see a release a little over every six months or so so you're still a ways away I personally would wait it out for the new all redesign but we might see those in the next refresh so if you guys can wait it out wait it out and for all of you asking about you know these threads of my clothes we've told you before in one of our past email episodes so if you can find it and name at least three of the brands that I like to wear the lucky winner will win the lumina bluetooth keyboard case for the ipad 2 from mi see gadget they hooked us up with one it's a 50-dollar value so get on it alright that's going to do for this week's show will be back with all new news but in the meantime some of your emails to the Apple Biden cnet com i'm brian Tong thanks for watching we'll see you next week for another bite of the Apple