Apple also mentioned that over half of the iPods sold were iPod Touches, and that iPod sales actually declined 21 percent from the 19.4 million sold a year ago (no surprise there).

Macs had a 26% increase year-after-year, and about 1.48 million desktops (which includes iMac, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro), and 3.7 million laptops (MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro) were sold. Even Apple’s “hobby”: the Apple TV sold a moderately impressive 1.4 million for the quarter, and 2.8 million for the 2011 fiscal year.

Chart below:

The Magic Charger is really great because it actually seems magical, since it charges the Magic Mouse through inductive charging. The Magic Charger comes with a charging station, rechargeable battery pack, and a USB cable to power the charging station.

Appearance

If the Magic Charger base station were made of aluminum, instead of plastic, we would think that this was actually a product made by Apple. However, as you know, it’s not. Mobee turned an amazing idea into a great product with a very pleasing design and appearance.

Measuring at 4.64 in x 2.55 in x 0.35 in, this is a very sleek product. The base station is at the perfect width and length to hold the Magic Mouse and its actually quite light too. The base station weighs less than 2 oz. With a unit so light, you’d expect it to be very flimsy but to our amazement, it’s not flimsy at all.

The battery pack that comes with The Magic Charger is a perfect fit on the Magic Mouse. After putting the battery pack into the Magic Mouse, you’ll be ready to go. Just connect a USB cable between your computer and Magic Charger and you should be ready to charge. There are no driver installations required, at all. Just plug and charge!

Performance

It takes about 6 hours to fully charge the rechargeable battery pack on the charging base. When using the mouse extensively, we saw the battery in the Magic Mouse last for nearly a week. When only occasionally using the Magic Mouse, we had the battery last up to nearly ten days. We usually just put the Magic Mouse on the base station every night, so we don’t have to worry about running out of charge the next day. This is good because of the convenience of knowing that your battery won’t run out but on the same note, it’s bad because the battery pack is supposed to have a total life of 500 charge cycles.

Final Thoughts

If you’re an avid user of your Magic Mouse, you should get this product. This product does come in on the pricier side – retailing for $49.99 at the Apple Retail Store. You may be able to get a slightly better price on Amazon or other retailers but it’s still going to cost a bit. This is a good product to keep your Magic Mouse charged but at nearly 3/4th the cost of the Magic Mouse alone – it does cost quite a bit. We also considered that this battery pack would give you about 500 charge cycles, which does make $50 a good investment.

While The Magic Charger is a great alternative to using standard alkaline AA batteries, our cost cautious readers might want to look into buying a pack of rechargeable AA batteries instead.

Check out the gallery after the break!

You can learn more about the Magic Charger from Mobee by visiting them on their website. You can find The Magic Mouse on Amazon.com and the Apple Store.

76MWHYEP3HLN   YKNH9E9JNTAL    6MWLK4R33N4E    KEN337JWYHX4

Since the iPod touch has possessed a relatively unchanged design over the course of the past few generations, compared to the changes that Apple has given to the iPhone, it definitely may be a possibility that Apple plans to add some excitement to the iPod’s design. Apple definitely has the expertise to release an iPod touch in both black and white, so we may actually see one officially released in the coming months.

We think there will be many more upgrades to the iPod beyond a simple color addition too, though. Apple will likely upgrade the current A4 processor to the A5 processor that’s currently featured in the iPad 2. The dual-core A5 processor, according to benchmarks, has significantly better performance than Apple’s currently featured A4 processor.

Do you think this is the next generation iPod touch? What other upgrades do you expect to be coming along in the next month or so?

Check out shots of the leaked iPod touch in gallery after the break.

All images are courtesy of 9to5Mac.

Design

This is an amazing looking external hard drive. In comparison to just about every other external hard drive I’ve used from any other company, this sets the bar for the best industrial design. The drive perfectly complements any computer, however this drive is setup right out of the box to work with Macs and it appears that they had the design of the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro in mind when designing this drive.

Performance

Right on the box the stated speed for FireWire 800 is “up to 75MB/s.” Whereas I’m used to experiencing half of the speed that’s usually advertised on a product, I was very surprised to see the Read/ Write Speeds of this drive very close to the stated amounts.

I tested this drive using AJA System Test. Again, I was really surprised to see the speeds so close to par. The average write speed for a 8GB file was 74.1 MB/s and the average read speed for a 8GB file was 81.2 MB/s using FireWire 800. The average write speed was 30.6 MB/s and read speed was 36.2 MB/s via USB 2.0. All of these tests were done on my 2011 Quad-Core MacBook Pro.

This drive utilizes an Oxford 934 Chipset, which not only allows it to have such a wide assortment of ports (USB 2.0, eSATA, FireWire 800) but also reduces the necessary CPU utilization on your computer through its internal ARM processor. This is particularly beneficial for professionals, in the media industry, because CPU usage can instead be dedicated to other tasks like rendering.

Other Thoughts

One thing I really liked about this drive is the fact that it has a built-in heat sink. Over the course of using this drive for nearly 3 hours, the temperature not once went above room temperature. The heat sink dissipates all of the heat from the drive really well.

Hitachi calls this a “Professional External Hard Drive” and thus its price-point passes consumer hard drives from other companies. While you can buy other comparable (in terms of storage capacity) drives from competing manufacturers – they will likely lag in performance and durability.

This drive isn’t for everyone. The great performance of this drive and the assortment of data ports are great features but not everyone needs them. This drive is aimed (and marketed) towards the professional and pro-sumer market. While this definitely has the capabilities to store movies, Time Machine backups, and a music library – I think it’s a bit overkill for these simple purposes.

If you’re looking for a quality hard drive that performs very well and complements the appeal of your Mac – this is the drive for you. If you’re looking for a budget hard drive to back up photos or hold your music, I think other hard drives will meet your needs just as well as this drive while saving you a lot of money too.

Enter the Giveaway:

Step 1: Follow @freeiphoneapps (you HAVE too, or else you will be immediately disqualified)

Step 2: Tweet this (fill out your creative response of course!):

If I WIN an iPod Touch (4th gen)  from @freeiphoneapps, I will [ENTER YOUR CREATIVE RESPONSE HERE] http://bit.ly/tweetblast

Step 3: Also tweet this:

Check out Rafter iPhone app with ‘new themes’ from @punflay on the AppStore here http://bit.ly/emantras

If you own an iPad, you might want to check out Rafter HD here: http://bit.ly/rafterhd .

Good Luck to all of you!!

————————————————————————————————————————-

[learn_more caption="Show Official Rules"]
1. The promotion will begin at 9 PM PST on November 6, 2010 and we will announce the winner on November 30th, 2010.

2. To enter the promotion, the entrant must follow freeiphoneapps’s Twitter account located at the URL http://twitter.com/freeiphoneapps from entrant’s own Twitter account. Entrant must then tweet both of the approved tweets. Tweets must remain visible and unprotected during the promotion period. Entrants may sign-up for their own Twitter account at https://twitter.com/signup.

3. The prize is an “iPod Touch 4th generation (8 GB | $229)”. We will ship or email equivalent US Dollar value ( winner may be required to have or setup a valid paypal account to receive cash equivalent ) the Prize to the winner within 20 days of the promotion closing date. The winner is responsible for any and all fees associated with activating and using the prize. The winner is responsible for any taxes associated with receipt of the Prize. Sponsor reserves the right to substitute the Prize with another prize of equal or greater value if the Prize is not available for any reason.

4. The promotion is open only to entrants who are 13 years of age or older at time of entry, and a legal resident of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada (excluding the Province of Quebec), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom. Entrants under the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence must obtain a parent’s or legal guardian’s consent before participating, and by participating represent that they have done so.

5. One winner will be selected randomly from all the valid entries. Sponsor will notify the winner via a Twitter direct message from the Sponsor’s Twitter account. If the winner does not respond within five (5) days, he or she will forfeit the Prize and another winner will be randomly chosen.

6. No purchase is necessary to enter or win, enter up to 3 times a day. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.

7. By participating in this promotion, entrants agree to release and hold harmless Sponsor, TeenCastic, and @freeiphoneapps from any claim or cause of action arising out of participation in the promotion.

8. The sponsor of this promotion is Emantras
[/learn_more]

• Fix the names of songs you import from a CD
• Add album art to songs without it
• Show videos by the band you are currently playing
• View the band’s bio from freebase
• Recommend albums and songs to you from via amazon
• Notify you of upcoming performances the artists in your library
• View news about the artists via google news
• Purchase merchandize, tickets, and music from the band through ebay

It fixes names of songs almost always accurately. Although it utilizes 3rd party resources to identify songs, it seamlessly integrates into TuneUp, making it easy to clean up your library. It does not automatically identify songs that need a TuneUp, which is a pain because with a large music library it is hard to quickly find the songs that are not complete.

Tune-Up Album Art

Adding album art is a breeze with TuneUp, it identifies albums that need art then quickly downloads all of the covers. It does not automatically add them however, you need to approve the album art. The album art for me, has always been accurate. It does not have album art for a lot of small bands.

Tune Up is a great tool for a music guru, but not for a casual iTunes user. If you are looking for an easy user interface, with a small set of necessary features SongGenie is for you.

Pros: Mostly accurate, attaches to the itunes UI. Has a lot of useful features.

Cons: Pricey, other alternatives are better. Can be confusing to use.

Here are the lyrics:

VERSE 1
I try not to be dramatic – unless I hafta
But I was at the Apple Store pickin’ out a MacBook
And on my way out like “thanks for stoppin’ by”
And you walked in and you really caught my iiiiii-Pod
And I’ma put you on my playlist
I don’t know what ya name is but ya goin’ in my favorites
I got ya in my iSight, I hope ya hear cuz
Ima turn your volume up and speak into ya earbuds
I like yer interface, it ain’t a big deal
You got my heart spinnin’ right around like a Click Wheel
And I was thinkin’ we can shuffle through the interwebz
And find the time for iMovie playing at the Cineplex
And girl you know you made that *Final Cuuuut*
Even MacBook Air ain’t *light enuuuuff*
To outweigh my heart which is beating so rapid
That Ima hafta track it with an iPod App and
CHORUS
I fell in love at the Apple Store (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
I never felt like that before (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
And I fell in love at the Apple Store (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
I think I may come back for more (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
VERSE 2
And yes I’m aware that baby iMac
And maybe if you buy that we can iChat
And I don’t mean to be aggresive or a sleeze
And I don’t mean to Mac I’m just not PC
I know how to treat you – this ain’t a reboot
I’ll never find the need to Control ALT Delete you
I see no reason to mess with these slobs
Cause they’re like Bill Gates… and I’m Steve Jobs
I know you’re waitin on me to discover
That you need a man who will let you meet his motherrrr-
Board – well baby its fine
Cause I’m connectin’ broadband and this could really happen quicktime
So let’s find a network and go wireless
And if you’d like to try this maybe we can iTouch
And put your picture as my desktop backdrop
If you let me take my hard drive and put it in your laptop
CHORUS
I fell in love at the Apple Store (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
I never felt like that before (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
And I fell in love at the Apple Store (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
I think I may come back for more (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)

BRIDGE
(Reboot)
Ma-Ma Ma-Mac
Ma-Ma Ma-Ma Ma-Macintosh
Ma-Ma Ma-Mac
Ma-Ma Ma-Ma Ma-Macintosh
Mac Mac
Mac-Mac-Ma-Macintosh
CHORUS
I fell in love at the Apple Store (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
I never felt like that before (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
And I fell in love at the Apple Store (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)
I think I may come back for more (ah ooh ooh ah, ah ooh ooh ah ah)

What do you think of the video? Let me know by @ replying me on Twitter .

It seems though in the midst of all this AT&T along with Apple are beginning to “grow up” and now allow VOIP services such as Google Voice and Skype to enter the mobile phone networking arena which means Google Voice should be suiting up their iPhone App for the App Store battle soon.

This remains unclear what will happen to Google Voice or Apples relation with the FCC and Google in future meetings to come, but for now we remain voiceless for us GV fanatics.

According to recent reports it seems this bug has been discovered when users log in and out of their guest account back into their main personal account and find their data has been wiped off their hardrive for good.

Some say this bug has caused their whole account to become “blank” with not even a folder to show on the Macintosh computer.

CNET has recently posted a video claiming and showing you how to fix this problem which can be found at CNET’s website.

Wether or not Apple knows about this issue or not I do not suggest logging on to your guest account any time soon till Apple provides all of us with some answers.

The Macbook Line

Now this one came from no where generally before new products are released their are a couple of know details about the product with these macbook’s we knew nothing.  The new line of Macbook Pro’s,  like before includes the 15 inch and 17 inch models although now the 13 inch Macbook has been re-branded as a Macbook Pro. All 3 Macbook Pro’s now include the aluminium unibody enclosure, the green battery, a backlite keyboard, along with support for processor speeds up to 3.06GHz, Memory up to 8GB, Hard drive up to 500GB, and a 128GB or 256GB solid-state drive. The Macbook line will now only carry one computer that being the Macbook 13-Inch Plastic. Next up the Macbook Air announced January of last year, it is apple’s closest competition to a netbook. The Macbook Air recieved a price drop (1799>>>1499) and a system processer update. To view apple’s new laptop lineup check out their site.

Snow Leopard
Apple’s new operating system got some attention at apple’s press event. Today apple announced the release date and a price. 10.6 (Snow Leopard) will be out septemer of this year, it will retail for an outstanding price of $29! The price point signifies that apple wants everyone who own a mac to upgrade. For those who are on tiger the upgrade will be the usual $129.

Apple today released Safari 4, the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser. Available for Mac and Windows PCs and introduced as a beta in February of this year, Safari 4 features the Nitro engine which runs JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Safari 3. Safari 4 makes browsing more intuitive and enjoyable with innovative features, such as Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow, and support for modern web standards like HTML 5 and advanced CSS Effects.“The successful beta release helped us fine tune Safari 4 into an even better, faster version that customers are going to love,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari is enjoyed by 70 million users worldwide and with its blazing fast speed, innovative features and support for modern web standards, it’s the best browser on any platform.”

The free iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update includes some great new features, as well as all the features from previous updates. iPhone OS 3.0 also lets you run the next generation of iPhone apps, like peer-to-peer games¹ and more. If you’ve never updated before, now is the perfect time.

The Fastest iPhone Ever

The first thing you’ll notice about iPhone 3G S is how quickly you can launch applications. Web pages render in a fraction of the time, and you can view email attachments faster. Improved performance and updated 3D graphics deliver an incredible gaming experience, too. In fact, everything you do on iPhone 3G S is up to 2x faster and more responsive than iPhone 3G.

Video

Now you can shoot video, edit it, and share it — all on your iPhone 3G S. Shoot high-quality VGA video in portrait or landscape. Trim your footage by adjusting start and end points. Then share your video in an email, post it to your MobileMe gallery, publish it on YouTube, or sync it back to your Mac or PC using iTunes.

3-Megapixel Camera

The new 3-megapixel camera takes great still photos, too, thanks to built-in autofocus and a handy new feature that lets you tap the display to focus on anything (or anyone) you want.

Voice Control

Voice Control recognizes the names in your Contacts and knows the music on your iPod. So if you want to place a call or play a song, all you have to do is ask.

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