Have Laptop Will Travel

15 inch Macbook Pro gets 2.93Ghz bump

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Apple’s Macbook Pro is not going to be left behind in Apple’s series of announcements. Apple has announced that the 15 inch Macbook Pro’s processor speed will be bumped up to 2.93Ghz. It should be remembered that the 17 inch Macbook Pro (Unibody) was initially put in the market with a 2.93Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo as a configure to order upsell. This is a bump in speed from 2.66Ghz. It is now the 15 inch variant’s turn to get the 2.93Ghz processor and it will cost the same $300 upgrade price that is similar to the 17 incher’s.

This is great news for those who think the 17 inch Macbook Pro is too expensive for their budget and can only afford the 15 inch model. With the upgrade, buyers can now enjoy increased speeds.

Apple releases revamped MacBook Pro

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All this attention to Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ health and his decision to step down temporarily from his position at Apple has actually left me forgetting about the new offerings from the company — namely, the revamped Macbook Pro.

The new version of the 17-inch Macbook Pro is both underwhelming and just right. The fact that it was underwhelming was because of rumors that it will get the aluminum brick chassis, glass trackpad and Intel CPU.

But as revamps go, it was still (a little bit) okay. The biggest news is the now non-removable battery. Apple said that a removable battery left a lot of “wasted space”. By making it non removable it gave it more space to put in a higher capacity battery. The company claims the new battery can work up to 7 to 8 hours in a single charge. It also has a new LCD screen and with option to get a glare or non-glare screen.

The new Macbook Pro will retail at $2,799.

Jobs’ health discussed in Bloomberg

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Steve Jobs is creating a lot of stir in the industry because of questions regarding his health. Recently, Jobs stepped down from his position as CEO of Apple, citing a hormone imbalance that he wanted to correct. But according to Bloomberg News, Jobs is very sick and that he currently looking into undergoing a liver transplant as a way of helping with complications that have been brought on by his past bout with pancreatic cancer.

Apple COO Tim Cook has taken over Jobs until his return in June.

What is further fueling speculations is Jobs’ continued refusal not to speak to the press regarding his health.

I do hope that Jobs gets well soon.

New Apple update bricking machines?

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Remember my post yesterday about updating your Macs? Well, better put it on hold first.

An update released this Monday for the Leopard operating system is proving to be a faulty one with users reporting that the update to Mac OS X 10.5.6 has completely killed their units.

According to reports, some people who turn on their updated Macbooks will hear a spinning sound, the LED lights will turn on but then nothing else will happen. The initial speculation is that it could be a logic board failure. The solution is a replacement board but then the cost of the board is as much as a new unit.

The update to 10.5.6 was released in order to make improvements to some features, and this includes syncing between the address book and the iPhone, the roaming capabilities of AirPort connections, encryption alert that appeared in the iChat window.

Now the errors reported with the update include broken Bluetooth connections, no sound to popping sounds during boot-up, and dead USB ports.

Apple has not yet issued any statement regarding this problem.

Apple releases new updates to address vulnerabilities

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Mac users turn on your updates if you haven’t yet.

Apple released last Monday a security update for both the Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, client and server. The new update will bring the versions of the OS to 10.4.11 and 10.5.5.

The update was developed to fix 21 vulnerabilities of the OS. About seven of the vulnerabilities have been linked to the Adobe Flash plug-in.

The updat will affect a number of system components and are deemed critical. One example of this would be a bug in CoreGraphics that has been described as “viewing a maliciously crafted image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution”.

Even though the bugs that were identified are not at the level where remote users can gain access to your system even without any user interaction, it is still best to update your Macs immediately.