Super-slim MacBook Air

Apple big boss Steve Jobs has just unveiled the ultra-slim MacBook Air laptop computer that he billed as "the world's leanest laptop". At the Macworld Expo opening in San Francisco- January 15, 2008-, Jobs slid the laptop from a brown envelope typically used for inter-office mail.
"It's the world's thinnest notebook (computer)," Jobs said with a smile. "We went out and looked at all the thin notebooks out there and tried to distill a best-of-breed."
The super-slim MacBook Air is less than an inch thick and turns on the moment it's opened. It weighs three pounds and have battery life of five hours. The ultra-lean laptop is priced at 1,799 dollars and will begin shipping in two weeks, Jobs said.





On another level, Jobs pointed out that Apple Inc. has sold four million iPhones since the cellphone, was launched in June 07. He also unveiled iPhone software upgrades including a location-detecting map feature crafted with help from Internet giant Google and wireless communications firm SkyHook.

Google wove a "location finder" into its mobile map service last year. SkyHook has mapped 23 million wireless signal "hot spots" in the United States and Canada, and is working on Europe, and uses the information to triangulate positions of wireless-enabled mobile devices.
"We are using both of them (Google and SkyHook) and it works pretty doggone well," Jobs said while demonstrating the 399-dollar iPhone's new map feature, which is part of a free software upgrade made available this Tuesday(15 jan 08).
"The iPhone is not standing still. We keep making it better."
SkyHook map technology, which works without need of mobile telephone service, will be part of a 20-dollar software upgrade package for iPod Touch devices, Jobs said.

Apple commands you

Who'd have guessed what lies behind 'command'?

We're talkin' here about the command key for Apple computers...

Well, well well... Steve Jobs has it for you...

"It’s difficult to come up with a small icon that means “command”, and we didn’t think of anything right away. Our bitmap artist Susan Kare had a comprehensive international symbol dictionary and she leafed through it, looking for an appropriate symbol that was distinctive, attractive and had at least something to do with the concept of a menu command. Finally she came across a floral symbol that was used in Sweden to indicate an interesting feature or attraction in a campground. She rendered a 16 x 16 bitmap of the little symbol and showed it to the rest of the team, and everybody liked it. Twenty years later, even in OS X, the Macintosh still has a little bit of a Swedish campground in it."

Indeed, this sign is used across Nordic countries to mark general sight places, like old buildings, churches and castles.
Voilà... One mystery revealed...