Picasa, the Google developed software for organization and basic editing of photos, has been made available for Mac users! iPhoto, the application included on all new Macs and in the iLife software package, is quite good already; but some competition doesn’t hurt anyone. iPhoto is great, but a bit slow when you start to get a huge library of photos. Perhaps Picasa brings an improvement on this front?

One bad thing, however: It seems to be Intel only; so I am not able to use it on my trusty iBook G4. Another reason to get myself a MacBook Air.;-)

You can download Picasa for Mac from http://picasa.google.com/mac/

Turns out the rumors was correct this time. The October 14th Apple event yielded some brand new products (or nice updates to products). There were updates to the whole product line of Apple notebooks; MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Personally I’d really like to get the MacBook Air (as I like to be mobile); but the MacBook and the Pro version of it looks jummy as well. The new production technology that was predicted turned out to be correct. The notebooks are made out of a brick of aluminium; making them quite a bit more durable.

When it comes to the MacBook, it has got a brand new design. Aluminium, as mentioned above, is the main body. It features a glossy screen with a black border around it. Looking very nice. Also, the mouse trackpad has lost it’s buttons and now use virtual buttons in addition to gestures as the MacBook has. The graphics card, that was previously an on-board Intel gaphics chip, has been updated to a (5 times more) beefier NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chip which should make the MacBook a much better machine for simple gaming.

The MacBook Pro has been updated aswell. The design is the same as the MacBook, with all the features mentioned above, except the Pro got a larger screen. MacBook Pro also features 2 (!) graphics chips; one of them is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chip as in the Macbook, the other one a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT which gives top performance for graphical intensive tasks. You will be able to choose between the two graphics card, where the latter one will provide you with 4 hours of battery life and the first one 5 hours.

Last, but not least, the MacBook Air received an update. Designwise the machine is the same, but the graphics card has been updated; in addition to the hard drive and CPU that has received a storage/speed bump aswell.

Apple also announced a new monitor, the 24″ LED Cinema Display. Featuring easy connections to the MacBook line of products it is assured to be a hit. Except the price which is a huge hit to the wallet…

As predicted there will be an announcement of new hardware, most probably new notebooks, from Apple. The rumors leading up to the announcements mentions something about “the brick”. Whatever “the brick” might be is impossible to know. Some sources mention it is a new way to produce the notebooks out of a “brick” of aluminum. Other sources believe it is a new Mac Mini. Another source even think it might be something simple as a new power adapter.

Knowing Apple will have a presentation with the press I guess we can rule out a new power adapter.:-) Will be interesting to see what Apple has up their sleeve this time though. Some believe the new production technology (should that rumor be true) might lead to a price cut, with MacBooks starting at $800USD. The MacBook event will happen at the Apple Town Hall (at the Apple campus in Cupertino), on October 14th at 10:00 a.m. PST.

Apple just updated the firmware of iPhone and iTouch to 2.1. I have noticed big improvements on stability and a more “fluid” interface; not to forget a huge difference in the time it takes to backup the device in iTunes.. Today I found a cool little new feature that just goes to show how much attention Apple pays to details. The podcast window in iPhone/iTunes now shows a small icon next to half watched podcasts. Very practical for me as an avid podcast watcher.:-)