Apple’s never impressed me with a mouse. I join legions of others who feel like they’d never actually looked at someone using a mouse while they designed one. Most people I know ended up using a Logitech mouse with their Mac, because Logitech actually tried to design mice that people want to hold on to.

Today I went to the Apple Store near my home and tried the Magic Mouse ($69 MSRP). While first testing it out (for about 10 minutes), I felt like it was hard to figure out where to rest my hand, hard to scroll, and generally felt like the thing just wasn’t designed for humans to use it. Part of the problem I believe was Apple had a giant metal anti-theft button glued on to the middle of the mouse (where you would find the scroll wheel on any standard mouse), and it was making it really difficult to find a good place to do the gestures and scrolling function on the Magic Mouse.

Later on I tried it again at a MicroCenter (the midwest’s version of Fry’s Electronics), without the annoying anti-theft device latched on to it, and it actually felt very nice to use, tracked better, and scrolled better than the one I tried at the Apple Store. Chalk it up to the other one being a demo unit with an annoying cord on it, but it actually made me want to buy it. Back I went to the Apple Store and bought one.

The Mighty Mouse is Bluetooth (cordless) mouse, and as such, it uses two AA batteries. I am unsure how long they actually last, as Apple does not provide any battery life statistics, but it does say it has fairly aggressive battery-saving features. My current laptop mouse (A Logitech V270 Bluetooth) lasts several months on two AA batteries, time will tell how long the Magic Mouse lasts. It does have an on-off switch, similar to other “notebook” mice (although it is not billed specifically as a notebook mouse), which is a nice feature.

It has a “Multi-touch” surface, similar to the newer trackpads on the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, but more tailored to a mouse surface. It supports a regular old click (which does actually click down, something I was worried about with how the iPhone’s lack of tactile feedback rubs some people the wrong way) and can do “right-click” with the special Magic Mouse software loaded on the Mac (as of right now there is no special Windows driver).

Gesturing on the mouse surface gets you vertical and horizontal scrolling, screen zooming, and a two-finger horizontal swipe advances photos in iPhoto, for instance. It is an ambidextrous mouse as well, since it does not “lean” any particular direction and the button clicks can be reversed for lefties.

There’s not much else I can say about the Magic Mouse other than it will probably be another polarizing entry into Apple’s long history of mouse design. My suggestion is to try one for yourself in person before buying, but I was delightfully surprised that it actually felt like a mouse I’d use for a while.

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Here comes another item I purchased on a whim trying to fill a need. There are a lot of so-called “extended” batteries out there for the iPhone 3G. I was running into issues with my iPhone’s battery being almost dead after only a few hours of heavy use. I decided to research this for use on one of my vacations, since that seems to be the time when you are away from consistent power the most.

My search ended at the Kensington Mini Battery Extender and Charger for iPhone and iPod. This product retails at around $50, but can be found on amazon.com for around $35. It is a very compact, lightweight battery that can be plugged into the dock port on an iPhone or iPod for some extra juice.

There are other batteries on the market, namely the Richard Solo 1800, which gets consistently high ratings. But my problem with that battery is the cost (typically double the price of this one) and the fact that it’s so bulky on the phone. This battery can be attached to your iPhone and you can still talk on it without looking totally foolish. That’s a good feature in my opinion.

The manufacturer of the product, Kensington, claims that this device extends play time up to 30 hours of music or 6 hours of video (on iPod nano 3G) or 3 hours of talk (on iPhone). I never really have scientifically tested these claims, as my purpose for buying this wasn’t to extend my talk time on my iPhone, it was more to be able to keep using it as an internet browsing tablet for long after the regular battery dies, and for that this accomplishes the task well. The Kensington battery charged my iPhone 3G from nearly dead to 70% charge within a short amount of time. That’s a decent amount of extra juice to work with, and totally worth the money to have an emergency battery such as this around.

The packaging is sparse, but includes a retractable USB charging cable (it uses the standard “mini” USB connection) and can be charged off any standard USB port. It also includes a cover for the battery connector, which doubles as a sort of stand you can use to keep your iPhone or iPod Touch standing up to watch movies. I have yet to bother trying this, but it’s a neat little touch.

Overall, this is the best battery for the iPhone 3G I could find that is also portable and cheap. I’ve been using mine for a few months now, and I’d highly recommend it if you’re looking for a spare emergency battery solution that isn’t gigantic and has a decent amount of juice to recharge your iPhone with.

I’m writing from my second home today, San Francisco. I visited MacWorld Expo 2008′s opening day for exhibits… I also was outside of Moscone West during the keynote with my MacBook, watching MacRumors Live IRC chat robot spit out the feed of what was happening during the keynote. It was really fun out there, a large group of people had formed around me and my laptop, wanting to know keynote updates and see photos.

Regarding Apple’s announcements, let’s start with the big one. The MacBook Air. My first impressions of it after picking it up and typing on it at the show are that it’s incredibly cool and thin. The moment you put your hands on it, you feel the RDF kick in. It is a very slick device, in very typical apple fashion. With all the coolness of the device, there were a few things that struck me as omissions or things it (perceivably) lacked.

The first item on the list is the lack of an Ethernet port. I don’t know about how most people work, I usually leave this laptop (a MacBook) on my desk most of the time connected to my gigabit ethernet at home, which is insane amounts faster for transferring media back and forth between devices. Not having this item would mean you would be restricted by the speed of your wireless network (in most people’s houses, it’s 802.11g, which travels at a paltry 22mbit/sec at it’s best in my testing at home). It does support 802.11n, but N still doesn’t even touch the speed of gigabit Ethernet for simple file copying, and is wildly inconsistent on transfer speed since no one seems to want to agree on a final specification.

Secondly, the battery on the device is not removable. It’s the iPod all over again. I’ve heard installation is a free service apple will provide if you buy a new battery, but that means you have to buy the battery from them (at apple inflated prices) or do it yourself. Really stupid. I realize design choices are sometimes chosen over functionality in regards to Apple stuff, but every previous Apple laptop I can remember has a removable battery.

The third item on the list is the omission of any type of firewire port and only 1 USB 2.0 port. I don’t think this going to be as much of an issue as some people might think, but I routinely use 2 USB ports on the road (for instance, with a Verizon EVDO USB modem and a USB thumbdrive or card reader). Guess everyone will have to lug around an un-powered USB hub with them to compensate.

And finally, my last item of negativity on the product, what’s with the price point? $1799 to start? It’s thin and all, but it’s slower than my 1.5 year old MacBook, it has less features, and it has no CD/DVD drive. Add the 64GB SSD drive and you’re gonna pay $3000 for this thing. Hope you have a few spare credit cards.

All this being said, I may consider this device in a few weeks when it’s available. We’ll see. If I do, I’ll review it for the readers.

The only other item in the keynote I felt was noteworthy was the new software update for the crippled AppleTV appliance. The update includes the ability to rent movies directly from Apple, on the device, without the use of a computer. Pretty interesting. I had an AppleTV at one point and sold it, mostly because I didn’t find it immensely useful, and the limitations of the device and it’s ability to play content other than Apple’s hand-picked video and audio codecs got to me. This may renew my interest in it again to possibly buy another one, but only because they added the functionality to rent 720p HD versions of popular releases.

Currently there’s not another provider of a service like this, so we’ll have to see what kind of movies get there. An alarming item I read from the keynote transcript said movies come out “30 days after DVD release”… ouch. Honestly, if they really want to curb people from pirating media, why do they do stupid things like that?

Apple also dropped the price of the baseline AppleTV from $299 to $229, which was a smart move.

I had a great time visiting San Francisco for the event again and hanging out with some of my friends here. I’ll probably be back next year. The show itself was boring as usual, but Apple’s announcements and the parties and gatherings are the reason it’s fun. See you next year, MacWorld.

I have posted my photos from MacWorld 2008 on Flickr.

I bought a MacBook within 6 hours of its release by Apple in May 2006. For people who know me, this might not be suprising. I also purchased a MacBook Pro within a few days of it’s release as well, but just didn’t find the time to write about it. This review will mostly cover the MacBook and compare some of its features with the Pro, since this one is the one I really wanted.

This purchase was the latest in a string of Apple laptop purchases for me. In the past few years since late 2003, I’ve purchased nearly every Apple laptop that’s been introduced, other than the 17�? PowerBook and 17�? MacBook Pro. The reason this one is significant to me is two big factors – the size of the notebook and the speed. I’ll write more on the speed later in my review.

I bought the MacBook Pro 15�? as soon as I could get my hands on one, back in February 2006. I was tired of waiting for a replacement for my 12�? PowerBook and figured this was it for the time being. I liked the speed of the unit immensely. The graphics card was amazing as well (ATI Radeon X1600), and could even play PC games quite well on a dual boot with Windows XP using Boot Camp. My main gripe with the MacBook Pro 15�?, which made me sell it when this came out, was the size of the laptop (hardly a portable anymore) and also the terrible battery life (on average about 2.5 hours).

This leads me to talk about the MacBook. As I said earlier I really wanted a laptop that was as small (or close to as small) as my 12�? PowerBook was. I liked the size of that laptop so much I kept it for a year (forever in my lifecycle for tech products). The MacBook isn’t as small as the PowerBook 12�? was, but it is close enough for me. The design style of the MacBook combines the iBook look and materials with the thickness of a PowerBook shell that has a wide, bright, high contrast LCD.

The MacBook model I got has the Intel CoreDuo 2.0GHz processor and came with 512MB ram, which I promptly upgraded to 2GB (two 1GB modules) from newegg.com for $163. Having 2GB of RAM really speeds everything up and makes it easier to run software like WinXP on Parallels within a window and still have lots of memory left over for your Mac OS X programs.

The video card in the MacBook is the infamous Intel GMA950. I’ve heard a lot about this card from disappointed intel Mac Mini owners about how it doesn’t play 3D games that great. That is a true accusation, but calling this card a piece of junk really doesn’t do it justice. It handles playing a 1080p video clip from Apple’s Quicktime HD Gallery perfectly. What else could you ask for out of a video card? I never play games on my Mac, so I really could care less about gaming performance. One minor downside to using the GMA950 chipset is that it shares it’s VRAM with your computer’s main memory, making it steal as much as 80MB of ram away from your computer for it’s own use. This means if you have 512MB memory (the base configuration) you’re already down to 432MB ram before you even start using OS X. I highly recommend upgrading it to at least 1GB, and dual channeling your RAM with two identical modules if you can – this will increase the speed of the video card and overall memory performance slightly.

The MacBook employs a completely new keyboard which has inspired hate in some people. Personally, I like it and it serves it’s purpose well. The keys are almost like Chiclets and they recess into the keyboard (a picture). I find these work pretty much the same as any other keyboard you’ve used in the past on a laptop, and frankly I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. One complaint I have about this keyboard is the edges of the surface you rest your hands on is not beveled properly and is semi-sharp, causing your wrists to be irritated after using it on your lap for a while. Hopefully someone will make a wrist rest to make it easier on me, because it looks like I’ve been cutting myself sometimes after using it – so much that I defined a term for the laptop, EmoBook.

One bonus feature of the MacBook not available in any other Mac laptop I’ve ever used is the ability to remove the hard drive just by pulling out the battery and pulling one tab. It makes it impossibly easy to swap out the SATA 150 notebook drive with any size one you wish in seconds. Very cool. I may have to do this since mine only has a 60GB hard drive in it right now.

In my non-extensive, non-scientific testing of the Core Duo processor in the MacBook, I tried ripping a 1.5 hour DVD movie to XviD using HandBrake. It was moving approximately 41FPS through the movie, which is amazingly fast – way faster than my 3.0GHz P4 can do this. A two pass of this movie took about the same time it took to watch the movie yourself, 1.5 hours.

Battery life on the unit was more impressive than the MacBook Pro, but not as impressive as the iBook it replaces in Apple’s lineup or the old PowerBook 12″. Those two got around 4-4.5 hours typically. This unit gets in the neighborhood of 3-4 hours depending on how bright you leave the screen and processor use. I found that even at low brightness levels the glossy screen is much more readable than any non-gloss Apple LCD from the past – so it doesn’t hurt to leave the brightness low.

The unit also comes with a remote control for Apple’s Front Row feature, and has a built in iSight camera embedded into the top of the screen — so you can broadcast your nerdy face to all your friends who don’t have Macs.

Overall, I’m very impressed with my new MacBook for the time being – at least until they release another one. Then I’ll have to buy and review that, too.

Pros:
+ The price is right ($1199 for the 2.0GHz version at the Educational store).
+ Great redesign of the non-pro line.
+ High resolution, high contrast 13.3″ (1280×800) LCD.
+ Case is a lot more durable than the aluminum MacBook Pro/PowerBook.
+ FAST… really fast! Did I say it was fast?
+ Battery lasts between 3.5-4 hours.

Cons:
- Not as svelte as the 12�? PowerBook form factor.
- Gets hot when under heavy load, which is typical of any Core Duo notebook computer.
- Video card isn’t good for gaming.
- Glossy LCD can reflect the sun pretty badly in any area with lots of sunlight.