GeekwithEnvy

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Apple’s Special Event October 2013 – iPad Air Revealed

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October 22, 2013 Apple hosted a live streaming event to announce new updates and products. Here are some of the highlights of this event:

Mavericks:

Added iBooks, and available to download today for FREE regardless of which Mac OS you currently have installed. For more details on OSX Mavericks head to our earlier post.

MacBooks

 

Macbook Pro 13 inch:

    • Retina display
    • 2.4 GHz dual-core i5
    • 4GB DRAM
    • Iris Graphics
    • 128GB SSD

Starting at $1299 (ships today)

Macbook Pro 15 inch:

  • Retina display
  • 2.0 GHz quad-core i7
  • 8GB DRAM
  • Iris Pro graphics
  • 256GB SSD

Starting at $1999 (ships today)

Mac Pro:

Less power consumption and very quiet with a completely new design. Available in December 2013

(click images to enlarge)
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iPad Air and iPad Mini:

An all new designed iPad was announced, and they are calling it the iPad Air. Along with the Air they added a retina display option and the new A7 chip to the iPad mini which will cost $399. iPad Air will be available November 1, 2013.

 ipad with mini

ipad thickness
iPad Air thickness compared to the latest generation iPad
ipad bezel
iPad Air bezel compared to the latest generation iPad

 

The biggest day ever for apps – Eddy Cue

Today they talked about major app updates and how they will now be useable on both Mac and iOS, free to download today.

iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, and iWork all with new features and updates to work with the new Mavericks and iOS 7.

To watch the whole key note head here, Apple.com 

How to Upgrade Your Mac

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macUpgradeOWC

Apple’s latest line up of computers are extremely thin and compact, it’s amazing how much can fit in such a small form factor. All of this makes for an amazing design but it also has a downside.

To those of us who are more inclined to tinker with our machines, it can appear as if there’s almost no way to upgrade Apple’s latest and greatest. There is good news however. If you want to add some RAM or your own SSD to your Mac, then there’s probably a way to do it. You can even get step-by-step instructional videos on how to do it along with all the tools you will need.

All of this can be found at OWC (Other World Computing). OWC offers all kinds of options for upgrading your Mac, they sell the hardware and tools you will need to get the job done and all of it is reasonably priced so you can save some cash by doing it all yourself.

The upgrade projects can vary in skill level quite a bit, some of them are quite simple while others will require you to be pretty confident about tearing down your Mac. It’s safe to say that most of these upgrades are for the bold but if you’re not up to doing it yourself then in some cases OWC can do it for you.

All of their installation videos are available on their site but you can also view them on their YouTube channel. OWC also offers repair services for your iPad along with a ton of accessories and additional software.

 

 

Apple Pushes Out OS X Update 10.8.3 and SMC That Fixes Game Lag

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Apple Logo

Just the other day I put together a brief article on how to fix low frame rate issues on the Macbook Pro Retina, which were being caused after a recent update. Fortunately, You should no longer have to worry about those issues as Apple has just pushed out update 10.8.3 which also came with an SMC update version 1.1 that has corrected these frame rate issues.

SMC11updateSS

Update 10.8.3 Details

  • The ability to redeem iTunes gift cards in the Mac App Store using your Mac’s built-in camera
  • Boot Camp support for installing Windows 8
  • Boot Camp support for Macs with a 3 TB hard drive
  • A fix for an issue that could cause a file URL to quit apps unexpectedly
  • A fix for an issue that may cause Logic Pro to become unresponsive when using certain plug-ins
  • A fix for an issue that may cause audio to stutter on 2011 iMacs
  • A fix for an issue in Contacts that may cause cards to print out of order
  • A fix for an issue that may cause the desktop picture to change after logging out or restarting
  • A fix for an issue in Messages that may cause messages to appear out of order after waking from sleep
  • A fix for an issue that may cause the screen to display incorrectly after waking from sleep
  • Improves compatibility with IMAP servers in the Notes app
  • Allows the Slideshow screen saver to display photos located in a subfolder
  • A fix for an issue in Contacts that may cause addresses to print in the wrong location
  • Reliability improvements when using a Microsoft Exchange account in Mail
  • Xsan reliability improvements
  • A fix for an issue that could cause Active Directory accounts to be locked out after accessing the Security & Privacy pane in System Preferences
  • A fix for an issue that could cause link aggregation to not complete after a restart
  • A fix for an issue that could cause delays when logging into an Active Directory account on high latency networks

For more information on the OS X 10.8.3 update you can head to Apple’s official support page.