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.

Update: "Old" Cinema Displays still appear to be on Apple's website, so it looks like other screen sizes in the older form factor will continue to be available. For how long, we don't know.

[Via Engadget.]

According to posts appearing on MacRumors and BoyGeniusReport tonight, Best Buy has been receiving new part numbers and pricing for unknown devices that are shipping to stores right now. MacRumors took the part numbers and price list and came up with the following assumption for what's going to be announced during tomorrow's notebook event:

• K29, MB382LL/A $899.00 - MacBook?
• M97, MB466LL/A $1,299.00 - MacBook
• M97, MB467LL/A $1,599.00 - MacBook
• M96, MB543LL/A $1,799.00 - MacBook Air
• M96, MB940LL/A $2,499.00 - MacBook Air
• M98, MB470LL/A $1,999.00 - 15" MacBook Pro
• M98, MB471LL/A $2,499.00 - 15" MacBook Pro
• M88, MB766LL/A $2,799.00 - 17" MacBook Pro

While the entry-level MacBook isn't as inexpensive as some rumors had forecast, a Fortune / CNN analysis today noted that an $899 price point could expand Apple's notebook market by 50% in terms of revenue.

What do you think about this pricing rumor? My personal feeling is that the numbers are valid, considering they're appearing this close to a major event. Leave your comments below.

Our sister site Engadget received an invitation for a town-hall event in San Francisco about new Apple notebooks, featuring an image of what could be hinting at possible new aluminum enclosures for 13-inch MacBooks.

tw.apple.pro purports to have images of new aluminum cases for the MacBooks. Judging from the height of the ports (and if the photos are authentic) the new MacBooks could be significantly thinner than their predecessors.

In related news, AppleInsider claims to have confirmed that a widely-circulated spy-shot is indeed one from Apple's next generation of MacBook Pro, but is not fabricated from a single "brick" of aluminum, as 9-to-5Mac said.

The top case, however, appears now to include the ports, rather than having them integrated into the bottom case. (This could make case disassembly easier.) The port arrangement appears to include many more ports on the left side of the bottom case, much like the current MacBook.

Combined with earlier images of the back of the LCD and bottom case, the design retains much of the same look that MacBook Pros (and PowerBook G4s before them) have had since January 2001.

Apple's notebook event is scheduled for next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time (1 p.m. Eastern).

Last night, Apple issued an update for the MacBook Air. With the oh-so creative title of "MacBook Air Update," this update is recommended for all users and fixes "issues with video playback and processor core idling."

According to Apple, this update should not be installed until applications that modify processor operating characteristics (i.e. frequency and voltage), like CoolBook, are removed from the system. Apple says that these applications are not supported.

You can download this update by visiting the Apple support download website or by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update). Apple has published a support note with extra information about this update.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Many Mac users have wanted a tablet for years, but Apple has definitely failed to deliver such a device. But if you think that the ModBook is too expensive, or if you're the DIY type, then why not build your own Mac tablet? Hack-A-Day has posted a gallery of images showing some of the various types of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Mac tablets.

If you are too scared to start ripping apart a Mac notebook and blindly build your own tablet Mac, then why not take a peek at this Instructables project. If you have built your own Mac tablet before, be sure to tell us about it in the comments.


Thanks, Victor!

FastMac announced a new line of Mac notebook chargers today. FastMac found a work around for Apple not licensing the MagSafe chargers. TruePower U-Charge allows you to charge your notebook's batteries externally. Note that this does not power the Mac, it only charges batteries.

This charger will charge iBook G3/G4 12", PowerBook, MacBook, and MacBook Pro batteries without skipping a beat. FastMac also has plans for a 14.4V charger that would charge batteries for the clamshell iBook, iBook G4 14", and Ti PowerBook 15".

The TruePower U-Charge comes in 2 different colors (black and white) to match your machine better. The prices for these chargers start at $69.95. You can purchase the U-Charge on the FastMac website.

The iPhone may definitely have people jealous when it comes to the scrolling and multi-touch gestures -- many people may very well want this feature on a Mac. Well, with Smart Scroll X, you can get one step closer to the iPhone's scrolling feature. The "Super Wheel" gives your Mac's trackpad an iPhone-like scrolling feature. It allows you to control many different trackpad setting with the simple system preferences plug-in. Another cool feature is the "Grab Scroll," which allows you to grab a window and "fling" it across the screen.

Smart Scroll X was rated 4/5 by Macworld's Mac Gems. It was also recently updated to work with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2. Smart Scroll is avaiable for $19 from the developer's website; a free trial is also available.

MacNN is reporting on a patent filed by Apple that describes a laptop docking station that looks a lot like a hollow iMac. According to images filed with the patent, a laptop is slid into a compartment on the side of the dock, leaving the laptop's ports accessible.

There's no indication as to how the display works. Perhaps the docking station itself has a display that's powered by the laptop, though it seems silly to have two displays. It could be that the laptop in question is actually a tablet that docks with its own display facing the user.

The patent also mentions liquid cooling and a "telephonic handset." It's all interesting, but who knows if any of this will come to fruition. Perhaps we'll see next week.

Silly us. In our iPhone excitement, we forgot to post a Rig of the Week. Bad bloggers!

This week's rig comes from tnkgrl, who has a ModBook of her own (or at least had a chance to visit with one). They were announced at Macworld in January, and were scheduled to start shipping this summer. Has anyone received one? They're kinda bulky, but we'd LOVE to play with one.

"Untitled" by tnkgrl

If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. Each Sunday we'll comb through the most recent entries and declare a "Rig of the Week!"

SOHO Notes, the information manager/junk drawer application from Chronos, has hit version 6 and adds some nice new features. Perhaps in response to Yojimbo, there is new keyword and smart folder functionality. There's also new support for scanning directly into SOHO Notes a la Yep, as well as new custom forms for data entry and 256-bit encryption.

I used SOHO Notes' predecessor, StickyBrain, before switching over to Yojimbo. While I prefer the latter for its use of Core Data instead of OpenBase, I do think Chronos does a very good job of seeing what sort of features its competitors are offering and integrating them into SOHO Notes, making it one of the most full-featured of the note-taking applications on the Mac.

SOHO Notes 6.0 is $39.99 ($25 for upgrades from previous versions, including StickyBrain) and a demo is available.

[via MacMinute]

We've previously mentioned the coconutBattery and MiniBatteryLogger free monitoring tools, but if you want to take your Portable's battery analysis to the next level, then iBatt is for you. In addition to a battery Health Report grade (which compares your battery to other people's batteries of the same model via iBatt's servers), you get a variety of stats on your battery (capacity, cycles, etc.), a discharge graph, and, best of all, the gauges on the right. Because anything with analogue gauges is by definition cool.

You will, alas, have to cough up $19 for this cornucopia of battery information, but can you really put a price on cool analogue gauges?

[Via Powerpage]

Samuel Cohen over at theappleblog has a nice post up on ten top apps for laptop-toting Mac users. Many of his selections are old favorites (Quicksilver), but there are a few here that are new to me. The CornerClick Preference Pane allows you to assign various actions to the corners of your screen. According to Sam, fKeys lets you "remap the enter key (not the return key. The enter key. It's the one that's in between the command key and the arrow keys on the right-hand side of your laptop keyboard) to an option key, just like on a full-size keyboard." Finally, Noise is a simple app for generating pink noise for when you want to tune out the Muzak at your local coffee house. Check out the original post for the rest, while I go play with CornerClick.

[Edit: Corrected CornerClick description; thanks Dan. I was probably thinking of the replacement trackpad driver SideTrack which does allow for assigning functions to corner clicks on the trackpad].

I enjoy using my trusty MacBook, Janus, I really do. We have a good relationship, I use him and he works (most of the time). This is a relationship that I would like to last for a long time, and luckily Apple has some tips for the proper care of your portable.

Read the tips for MacBook care, and MacBook Pro care, and assure your portable is treated in the best possible way. None of this is mind blowing stuff, but it did remind me not to use a pillow to prop up my MacBook (the pillow blocks the air flow, which it would seem isn't good for delicate electronics).

Although I'm a Mac Geek by trade, I tend to avoid the terminal unless I'm out of other options. I'm a GUI kind of girl. It's the Mac OS that I love, not its Unix underpinnings. I appreciate the power of the command line - I just don't want to spend all day there. Still, once in a while I come across a tip like the one, which Glenn Fleishman posted in the most recent TidBITS, and I find myself unable to resist the urge to fire up the Terminal.

This tip solves a problem that I've experienced myself and many of my clients have complained about - laptops waking from sleep while in their cases because the latch won't keep the lid closed. This can cause overheating, which can lead to a variety of other problems, like hard drive failures, etc. My solution is, of course, to fix the latch! But there are times when that isn't convenient and even if it's convenient it doesn't happen often enough for some people to even bother stressing about it. By harnessing the power of pmset, the command line app that controls power management settings, you can fix it so that your sleeping beauty stays asleep, even when the latch isn't doing its job.

The command is an easy one - a single line. Ready for it?

sudo pmset lidwake 0

By setting the lidwake value to 0 you prevent the machine from waking until you tap a key on your keyboard, and since the value gets written just to a plist file, it takes hold right away. Of course you'll need administrator privileges since you'll be asked for an admin password before the command is executed.



For more pmset options, have a look at the "man" pages at Apple's Darwin Reference library, or open your Terminal and type "man" (without the quotes), hit return and then type "pmset" (without the quotes.)

Product recalls are certainly nothing new to the tech industry, but two significant PC players (Dell and Apple) having to recall a collective 5.9 million batteries has to sting just a little for Sony. Macworld is reporting that the Japanese company announced an estimate on the cost of said sting: between ¥20 billion to ¥30 billion (US$172 million to $258 million). The moral of this story? QA is a good thing.

Let's hope the upcoming summit in San Francisco on li-ion battery manufacturing standards - jointly held by the likes of Apple, HP, Dell and Lenovo - helps cut down on the exploding notebooks so we can all get back to our daily routines.