Apple Announces new Macbooks, Macbook Pros, and Macbook Airs
Macbooks
You heard the rumors, now get the details. Apple has just released a major update to the MacBook line, leaving the original white plastic model in the mix but lowering the price to $999; the two new models are priced at $1299 and $1599. You can see a video overview of the new beasties at Apple's site.
The new models feature the same unibody aluminum construction process as the MacBook Pro; video chores are handled by the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M display subsystem with 256 MB of shared video RAM, a dramatic performance boost from the older Intel integrated graphics -- Apple claims 2.5x-6x better 3D performance on gaming tests.
Both new models support up to 2560x1600 pixels on an external display (via the new Mini DisplayPort connector) and sport a native 1280x800 13.3" glossy LED screen. The design of these laptops is so radical, Apple has two full pages of sweet geeky detail posted on apple.com.
Both models include the new all-glass trackpad, built-in iSight, 8x Superdrive and 2 GB of RAM. They are under one inch high (2.41 cm), 12.78 inches (32.5 cm) wide, and they both weigh 4.5 lbs (2.04 kg). Neither MacBook model includes a FireWire port (unlike the big boys, which have a single FireWire 800 port) -- this is a definite drawback for anyone thinking of one as a mobile video workstation.
Lower-end model:
- Price: $1299
- Main Specs: 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, 3MB L2 cache, 2GB of RAM expandable to 4 GB, 160GB HD
- Display & Other: 13.3" screen, 8x Superdrive, 2 USB
- BTO: Add RAM (up to 4 GB), up to 320 GB HD or 128 GB SSD
High-end model:
- Price: $1599
- Main Specs: 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 3MB L2 cache, 2GB of RAM expandable to 4 GB, 250GB HD
- Display & Other: 13.3" screen, 8x Superdrive, 2 USB
- BTO: Add RAM (up to 4 GB), up to 320 GB HD or 128 GB SSD
More details on features, graphics, tech specs and environmental compliance are up at Apple's site.
Macbook Pro
Almost eight years ago, Apple introduced the Titanium PowerBook, and with it the company ushered in a wave of industrial laptop design that in many ways, is still unmatched. Although the 2003 and 2006 refreshes to the lineup changed the material (from titanium to aluminum) and processor (from PowerPC to Intel), the basic design has remained essentially the same.
It's time for a change. Last night we got a tip showing off the new design (a design that closely mirrors the leaked Deutsche Telekom images from last month), now we finally have the hardware details. Apple did mention that the rumored "Brick" manufacturing process is, in fact, what they are using for the new notebooks.
15" MacBook Pro
Price: $1999
Specs:
- 15.4" LED-backlit display
- 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (with 3MBs of L2 cache)
- 2GBs of DDR3 RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT with 256MB
- 250 GB hard drive
- Slot-loading Super Drive
15" MacBook Pro
Price: $2400
Specs:
- 15.4" LED-backlit display
- 2.53 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (with 6MBs of L2 cache)
- 4GBs of DDR3 RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT with 512MB
- 320 GB hard drive
- Slot-loading Super Drive
Macbook Air
Sweet! Even the MacBook Air got a boost, 9 months after the first release in January. As with the rest of the MacBook line, the new Air features the Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU and the Mini Display Port. The MacBook Air now supports DVI, dual-link DVI, and VGA video output. It will connect to the new Apple LED Cinema Display and can drive other displays up to 30 inches in size. Unlike many of the other MacBooks, it doesn't have the new glass trackpad.
The big deal from today's announcement? The top level MacBook Air now has a slightly faster CPU, faster memory, and a 128 GB solid state drive. The details are below, more to follow as we get a chance to play with one.
Entry level MacBook Air
Price: $1,799
Specs:13.3" LED-backlit display, Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU, 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 6 MB L2 Cache, 2 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 Memory, 120 GB SATA hard drive.
Form Factor: Same as existing model
Top level MacBook Air
Price: $2,499
Specs:13.3" LED-backlit display, Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU, 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 6 MB L2 Cache, 2 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 Memory, 128 GB solid state drive.
Form Factor: Same as existing model
New Cinema Displays finally arrive with iSight cameras, MagSafe connectors
In a move that surprised everybody and nobody simultaneously, Apple has released a brand-new 24-inch LED Cinema Display to spruce up the languishing product line.
In addition to a new form factor that brings their look in line with newer iMacs (and now the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models announced today), the displays have an iSight camera, speakers, and a MagSafe power connector to charge your laptop. They have a native resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels.
Also, the displays are more environmentally friendly, moving away from the mercury-vapor backlights to newer LED backlights now available throughout Apple's line of laptops. The surface of the display is glass, with a glossy finish.
The display includes three USB ports, but no FireWire ports featured on older Cinema Displays.
The new 24-inch display will be available in November for $899.
Republican Circular Firing Squad
It's times like these when I just want to get a bowl of popcorn and watch gleefully.
The Man Behind the Email Rumors About Obama
The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”
That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.
The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.
Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.
Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.
But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.
An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.
He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”
Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.
Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.
“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”
As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”
When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.
It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also be known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.
He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.
In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation.
His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.
“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”
Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.
Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam.
Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.
Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.
“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”
Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”
Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran.
Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Mr. McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”
Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.
In his original press release, Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.” He added, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”
Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews.
A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”
In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”
In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.
But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”
When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”
He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”
In discussing the denial of his admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he had clashed with.
Mr. Martin, who says he is from a well-off banking and farming family, is clearly pleased with his newfound attention. But, he said, others have added to his work in “scary” ways.
“They Google ‘Islam’ and ‘Obama’ and my stuff comes up and they take that and kind of use that — like a Christmas tree, and they decorate it,” he said. For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to a widely circulated e-mail message from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, “If Obama were elected, he would be the first Arab-American president.”
He said he had at least come to “accept” Mr. Obama’s word that he had found Jesus Christ. His intent, he said, was only to educate.
Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Prize in Economics
Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University and an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday.
“It’s been an extremely weird day, but weird in a positive way,” Mr. Krugman said in an interview on his way to a Washington meeting for the Group of Thirty, an international body from the public and private sectors that discusses international economics. He said he was mostly “preoccupied with the hassles” of trying to make all his scheduled meetings on Monday and answer a constantly ringing cellphone.
Mr. Krugman received the award for his work on international trade and economic geography. In particular, the prize committee lauded his work for “having shown the effects of economies of scale on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity.”
He has developed models that explain observed patterns of trade between countries, as well as what goods are produced where and why. Traditional trade theory assumes that countries are different and will exchange different kinds of goods; Mr. Krugman’s theories have explained why worldwide trade is dominated by a few countries that are similar to each other, and why some countries might import the same kinds of goods that it exports.
“There was something very beautiful about the old existing trade theory and its ability to capture the world in a surprisingly simple conceptual framework,” Mr. Krugman said. “And then I realized that some of the new insights coming through in industrial organization could be applied to international trade.”
Mr. Krugman wrote his dissertation, however, on international finance, and credits his professor at MIT, Rudiger Dornbusch, with pushing him to study international trade.
“I went to visit him one snowy day in early 1978 and described to him what I’d been thinking about,” Mr. Krugman said. “He turned to me and said, ‘You’ve got to write about that.’ “
Mr. Krugman has been an Op-Ed columnist at The New York Times since 1999.
“For economists, this is a validation but not news. We know what each other have been up to,” Mr. Krugman said. “For readers of the column, maybe they will read a little more carefully when I’m being economistic, or maybe have a little more tolerance when I’m being boring.”
He said that he did not expect his critics to let him off any more easily because of his new accolade, though.
“I think we’ve learned this when we see Joe Stiglitz writing,” Mr. Krugman said, referring to the winner of the economics Nobel in 2001. “I haven’t noticed him getting an easy time. People just say, ‘Sure, he’s a great Nobel laureate and he’s very smart, but he still doesn’t know what he’s talking about in this situation.’ I’m sure I’ll get the same thing.”
In 1991 Mr. Krugman received the John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to “that economist under 40 who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge.” He follows several Clark medal recipients who have gone on to win a Nobel, including Mr. Stiglitz.
“To be absolutely, totally honest I thought this day might come someday, but I was absolutely convinced it wasn’t going to be this day,” Mr. Krugman said. “I know people who live their lives waiting for this call, and it’s not good for the soul. So I put it out of my mind and stopped thinking about it.”
He said he did not participate in any of the economics Nobel betting pools , and that he did not know which day the winner’s name would be released until a colleague told him last week.
Mr. Krugman continues to teach at Princeton. This semester he is teaching a small graduate-level course on international monetary policy and theory, covering such timely subjects as international liquidity crises. In recent years he has also taught courses on the welfare state and international trade, as well as all-freshman seminars on various economic topics.
Monday’s award is the last of the six prizes and is not one of the original Nobels, but was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Alfred Nobel’s memory. Mr. Krugman was the only winner of the award, which includes a prize of about $1.4 million.