Mac News

Mac Rumors

Posted by samc on January 3rd, 2008

Apple at this Macworld Expo (January 14 - 18), will throw its weight further behind Sony Corp’s Blu-ray DVD format as opposed to Toshiba’s HD-DVD, according to Apple Insider.

In a report issued to clients early Thursday morning, American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu cited sources who say the Cupertino-based Mac maker, which already occupies a seat on the Blu-ray consortium, is set to begin shipping some of its computers with support for the next-generation DVD format.

“We believe this is a key announcement as current Macs ship with the DVD format and Sony gains a strong ally in Blu-ray,” the analyst told clients. He added that Disney, for which Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is a Director, is a firm supporter of Blu-ray, while rival Microsoft Corp. has placed most of its eggs in the HD-DVD basket.

Apple, which markets a complete line of HD content creation tools, announced in March of 2005 that it had joined Blu-ray Disc Association. Since then, however, the company has observed much of the ongoing battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD from the sidelines.

In other Apple news, Axiotron has (finally) released to retailers its Apple-authorized tablet, the Modbook, a modified MacBook running Mac OS X. It uses a pen-sensitive LCD slate-style display from Wacom for onscreen writing and drawing. Axiotron unveiled the Modbook a year ago at Macworld.

It offers 512 levels of pressure sensitivity to achieve a level of precision needed in creating and editing digital art, and is powered by a 2.0 GHz or a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The device uses Leopard’s built-in Inkwell software for handwriting recognition and costs $2,279 - $2,479.

Meanwhile, MacRumors claims the Apple subnotebook is real and will be announced at MacWorld 2008. It will be 50 percent thinner than the company’s existing MacBook Pro, and use NAND flash memory in place of a traditional hard disk. Check out possible spy pic at CrunchGear.

Apple’s sub-notebook is rumored to retail for $1500, while the 3G iPhone is expected by June.

source : dailywireless.org