AllThingsApple.Net

Imagine you’re watching this awesome “Discovery-channel-type” movie in an IMAX theatre (3-D movie theatre), and you can hold out your hand and touch that enormous creature up there. Incredible, I’d say. I’d be on the edge of my seat if I could do that. Well, the funny thing is, now I can.

Japanese firm NTT (Japanese are brainacs, I’d say), has unveiled a system that makes three dimensional images solid enough to grasp. Wait, don’t gasp yet!
This amazing technology could enable you to feel like you’re touching your distant loved ones while you have a virtual tête-à-tête with them. So now even if your honey is sitting miles away, you can touch him or her (well, not quite literally) while chatting with him or her on Skype or other distance-busters. (more…)

PC maker Apple Inc has secretly upgraded the Santa Rosa MacBook Pro with a new, higher resolution digital camera. The so far used 640×480 pixel camera has been quietly replaced with 1.3MP (1280x 1024) model. A number of Apple Macintosh developers have noticed and piblicized the change in model numbers when they tested their iSight enhancement application iGlasses on the new notebooks at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco earliier this month.
According to tech news site Wired.com, the Apple experts biked down to the local Apple store and ran some tests on the Macs there. Sure enough, the new cams were in there but oddly, built in applications like iChat don’t use the full resolution. The guys also believe that the camera wasn’t enabled at all until the recent OS X 10.4.10 update. Anyone out there with shiny new MacBook Pros, please leave your test results in the comments.

Well over one hour and activation by AT&T via Itunes still not complete. Note to AT&T: If you want a succesful launch, be prepared for it!

Internet! It’s always been trying hard to rid us of the “idiot-box” syndrome, and the good news (or bad news for TV stations) is that the market for Internet TV is estimated to grow by 13.7 per cent US$5.79 billion in 2011 (It was US$422.7 million in 2006), according to a research report from iSupply.We all knew this was coming, didn’t we? The web was always on the growth trajectory of being the most-sought after interactive video library ever! N with more and more people glued to the internet at all hours, Internet TV is big business (I personally stopped watching TV 3 years back, n hook up everything from news to video to music from online). The good news is (more…)

Laptop users concerned with their fashion statements who are dead tired of the usual colors of black and gray on their micro device - this next “innovation” is just for you. Dell Inspiron and XPS laptops in flamingo pink, midnight blue, alpine white, espresso brown, sunshine yellow, ruby red, spring green, and jet black.

Dell proudly presents the brand new 13″ XPS and Inspiron laptops. Inspiron laptops are calculated to be sold at $749 carrying 32 gigabytes of memory. XPS laptops, on the other hand, cost $1,299.

This option is particularly good if you are color-conscious of your PC. Not only are they fashionable but they are lightweight too. They are also faster using the latest Intel Centrino Duo platform. It also boasts backlit display. (Seph)

MB. GB. N now it’s TB. No, not Tuberculosis. What I’m talking about is the 1 terabyte hard drive soon to be brought out by Seagate.

Retailing at $399 (incidentally, Hitachi introduced its 1 terabyte hard drive for the same price two months ago) this great computer must-have is due to hit the shelves in the third quarter of the year.

According to researchers at UC, Berkeley, the information that can be stored on a 1 terabyte hard drive is equivalent to converting 50,000 trees into paper (that’s the unit they’ve been using to measure hard drive capacity ever since the 5 MB HD came to the market) or 10, 000 pages of WordStar documents.

Wow, you might say. But Seagate would definitely have to offer great quality since it has pre-determined competition waiting for it. The world is moving fast, isn’t it? I was just beaming about the great 100 GB hard drive I had on my laptop, and lo! We now have choices between terabytes (eoww). (NiRa)

Zap, synonymous with the first “zapper” electric car called Xebra (an offspring of decades of research and evolution) it made, is still fresh in the minds of all of us who found a solution to high cost, polluting, noisy cars.

The incorrigible Zap (as in Zero Air Pollution) is now all set to design its second electro-baby, this time much better than its first ( well, it shows promise, but trust me, you can never be too sure).
Apart from the fact that some features of the previously announced ZAP-X electric compact crossover concept will exist in the new vehicle, this one’s expected to run 100 miles per charge (usually almost 12 kilowatt hours. Nasty, I’d say).

This one’s expected to retail at $30,000. Honestly, why would you want to shell out so much to be in a budget-bashing ‘so-called’ head turner. I mean c’mon, with the pace at which life’s running these days, can you imagine having to charge your car, when you can’t quite find time to charge your cell phone? `N come to think of it. Okay, its great to be an environmentalist. But what on earth would you do when you get a sky-rocketing bill every month after buying a car that cost you a fortune? And moreover, battery replacements cost about $2000. Trust me, if the inexorable gas prices gave you sleepless nights, this one’s going to make you a true blue insomniac. Money, my dear, can be far better spent. But well, that’s me.

For all those phantom-addicts the world over, here’s something that might excite you equally, if not more. Imagine your favorite superhero crashing out of the ocean in an uberkiller Sea Phantom (that’s what it’s called) looking every bit his or her dashing best. Okay, considering it’s the matrix era, it might not be something that makes you go gaga. But what the heck. This one’s sure to make you impress that superwoman in your life on a funky day at the beach.

The prototype beach buggy uses a regular motor and can achieve speeds of upto 70 mph. With its aerofoil shaped body, it almost flies over the water (Personally I think is great, now you can have some adrenaline-pumping kiddy fun on the sea without looking stupid).

Sure, looks interesting and sounds like a cute deal. But on the flipside, 70 mph is nothing but average for a boat ( so what if its about doing it on a regular outboard, you n me didn’t ask for that).Moreover (all those sensitive lovers of marine life) hybrids like these are notorious for killing those angels of the sea! (NiRa)

Brain Age and Nintendogs loyalists, there’s good news for you. The über-competitive Nintendo has briefly outdone Sony in terms of market capitalization this Monday.

Nintendo has been a great success so far, with its Wii game console outdoing sales of Sony PS3 (and Sony is an undisputable world leader in game consoles, mind you. At least until now) in the past financial year. It sure might not mean Sony’s days are numbered, it just means that Nintendo is here to stay.

The shares of the Kyoto based company, which finished at 11th place in terms of market share, has soared over the same period in which Sony’s shares increased by 66 per cent. Okay, Sony definitely is a household name worldwide, but Nintendo definitely seems to have the potential to outdo it (especially if it keeps up at its current pace).

The future looks great for Nintendo (although the industry is subject to a high degree of volatility, and no players success can be vouched for, for long), with third party software makers going overboard developing software titles for Nintendo’s hardware.

The father of innovative and easy-to-use games, Nintendo’s moves are well- calculated and factor all possibilities of market volatility in the near term.

Star Wars definitely raked enough moolah at the box office. The man (or woman) behind it may have definitely gone from rags to riches, and more riches (that’s if he was ever in rags) long ago. It took over everything from clothes to upholstery, games to schoolbags, cartoons to music, and even to toilet covers…

It might not be new to have gadgets following the same trend. But this one’s definitely a cool blue delight. Commemorating the 30th anniversary of the super-successful series, this one is a reasonably good replica of the pig-headed R2-D2 in the form of a 628 x 528 pixel Wireless Web Camera.

It can be managed completely by a remote control to turn it in whichever direction you like, and has got worldwide remote access capabilities which will allow you to have power over R2-D2’s movements and access the web camera from a laptop or a PC no matter which part of the world you’re at.

Apart from looking like a complete Star Wars theft-product (I say that coz I’d surely steal it if it was), this one has zoom, tilt and voice-recording teamed with 11 tracks and phrases from the original Star Wars series. Now that’s what I call a Sci-fi lover’s gateway to the world (or World Wide Web) ahem! (NiRa)