So where are the controls? Conveniently placed on the earbuds. Ergonomics win, right? Maybe, if you like Morse code…one click to play/pause, two clicks to go to the next track, three clicks to jump back a track, or to the beginning of that track, three long clicks, three short and three long for SOS. Sorta like the iPod touch, but with no screen. You do get two volume buttons nearby, but of course there’s no right-click :p.

But wait, it gets even better. If you want to hear what’s playing on your chip clip iPod shuffle, just hold down the play/pause/forward/reverse button for a bit. The music will fade down and a voice, encoded on your computer and male or female depending on the operating system (Mac OS 10.5 Leopard uses “Alex”, Tiger and Windows use a female voice), will tell you the artist, album (News Flash: Apple tries to kill albums to pad iTunes profits!) and track name. Nifty if you’re trying to sift through a thousand songs that sound the same.

Even better, the darned thing supports playlists, so you might might be able to find the song you’re looking for! Hold down the play/pause/forward/backward/VoiceOver (that’s what they call their text to speech system) button down until a cute little tone is heard, and you get a list of your sync’d playlists. Hit the play/pause/forward/backward/VoiceOver/playlist button again when you hear the one you want, and it’ll start playing. A genius way to use way too few buttons.

As an added bonus, if you lose the earbuds, or decide that Apple isn’t the way you roll when it comes to hi-fi assaults on your eardrums, your $79 shuffle becomes a chic chip clip, until you shell out $29 or $79, depending on your preference of in-ear or normal, for another set of Apple-branded earbuds. Vendor lock-in for the win, right? You’re similarly screwed if you lose the minijack-to-USB cable that comes with the shuffle…that’s how you charge the ten-hour built-in battery.

Will I be reviewing the new shuffle, rather than just dishing out smack talk about the poor thing? Highly likely. Will I rant and rave about how the cheaper ($49, 1GB, more squarish, colorful) shuffle can use my pair of $25 in-ear ‘buds (Koss, and they do sound decent), and this little guy can’t? Yes. Will I keep calling the world’s most advanced screenless MP3 player a chip clip? You betcha.

• Search (Palm circa late ’90s was awesome)
• Copy and paste (from the people who brought you Ctrl-X, -C and -V…anything daring to call itself a computer has had this since the dawn of time)
• MMS (granted, the iPhone MMS app has contact and location attachment, but 99% of phone have had this feature for six years or so, albeit with the main not-have being smartphones)
• Reading and composing e-mails in landscape, and having a landscape keyboard standard in all Apple apps (really, was it that hard?)
• A2DP Stereo Bluetooth (wireless headphone support, something every $50-with-a-contract phone, and 99.9% of smartphones, have supported since the iPhone came out)

There are some features of the iPhone that are the wave of the future, to be sure, and Apple’s leadsership brought in an era of truly usable smartphones and truly high-end feature phones. I’m also happy to see these rather glaring omissions added to the docket of iPhone features. However I’m still left scratching my head at how Apple leaves out obvious features on their products, putting them in only after a revision or two that may just be in software.

This also distances the iPhone from the iPod touch, which is a good thing for the iPhone…but I’m still not paying $70 + texts + tax per month for an iPhone plan, even if it means I won’t have MMS and A2DP due to my model being the older one. Speaking of which, if you want to pay $400 over contract price, you can now get an iPhone 3G contract free, albeit only if you’re already an AT&T subscriber. You can then unlock the iPhone and use it on T-Mobile with non-3G service, but what fun is that when you just erased the price difference between your plan and AT&T’s by paying through the nose for your handset?

Then again, if the iPhone 3G had a CDMA version for that price…I’d probably still get a Palm Pre :p.

For deelopers, there are some nifty features, albeit ones that, in some cases, have beena round other platforms for ages…then again, Apple is very picky about how its app developers make its platform look, so you coul dmake the argument that some features are poorly implemented on other platforms:

• In-application purchases (so you can actually get a single “reader” program, then buy books for it; all other platforms have no problem with this, and my jailbroken iPhone has an excellent reader app where you could download books and have them right ther eto read)
• Push notifications (so you can actually use stuff like IM on your phone…background processes have been hard to handle on low-powered devices like phones, but taking this long for Apple to get an alternative out must be annoying for devs)
• Accessory access, via dock connector and Bluetooth (good deal, though it was in Apple’s interest to get the dock work out sooner, since they make a cut of all accessory purchases…wonder if this means you could use your iPhone as an offload for digital cameras…you know, real ones)
• Peer to peer wireless connectivity over Bluetooth (Nintendo DS has WiFi, Palm products have had infrared forever, and have done very well with it, and Pocket PCs have had infrared as well…plus newer Palms and Pocket PCs have had Bluetooth)
• Maps access (this also includs turn-by-turn navigation, albeit with your own maps…funny how Apple didn’t like that before due to battery concerns…but normal maps can be Google’s, which is nice for many applications)
• iPod Library Access (alternate music players? Probably not, but it’s nice to be able to play music on an iPod touch + phone)

Maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but many features that Apple will soon implement on the iPhone simply bring things that everyone else has had for years to the table, so buying the device isn’t such a dilemna. Unless of course you actually want to use the phone with a plan, and don’t want to pay $100 per month for base serice that, I hear, doesn’t work in big cities due to network overlod (SXSW, anyone?). This is a problem, since you can only get the iPhone on that one carrier, who apparently can’t grasp that their subscirbers would actually use the network.

If you have an iPhone, rejoice. If you have an iphone 3G, rejoice some more. You may still be called a tool, but at least the geeky kids won’t make fun of you much longer for having a phone you can’t copy and paste with…that you paid $200 plus a thirty-dollar data plan for.

iMac

Mac mini

Mac Pro

http://www.apple.com/macbook/white

Basically you’re looking at an aluminum MacBook…without the aluminum…with FireWire.

Yes, FireWire. Apple seems to have listened to the plaintive cries of Mac tech-heads everywhere. For the people who don’t need the aluminum housing, the new white MacBook has pretty much all the features of the aluminum model, albeit at a price point $300 lower than the metal model.

So what don’t you get?

• DDR3 memory (667MHz DDR2 is still plenty fast, and it’s cheap if you want to upgrade)
• Gesture support\buttonless touchpad (just scrolling…smaller touchpad too, but it works okay)
• Mini DisplayPort (no 30-inch displays), just Mini-DVI
• Aluminum housing (the white MacBook is five pounds, the aluminum model is four and a half)
• 40GB of hard disk space (120GB vs. 160GB)
• A half-hour of battery life (4.5 vs. 5)

However you do get the new Intel platform (1066 MHz bus, GeForce 9400), 2GB of memory, and all the amenities of having a Mac portable. The price? $999, $949 if you’re buying educational.

The bottom line? It’s fast, it’s relatively cheap, it’s a Mac and it’s available wherever Apple computers are sold (including your local Mines bookstore).

I, for one, am buying.

UPDATE: A member of NotebookReview has posted their impressions of the new MacBook. A few things of note: build quality on the white MacBook is lower than that of the aluminum model, and graphics take a 15% hit due to the use of slower memory in the plastic model. Then again, the white MacBook still outperforms Intel’s best integrated chip, the GMA X4500MHD, by about 80%.

1. Quicksilver
Hit a shortcut key (I set mine for double-tapping the Command key), then start typing. Applications and files pop up quickly. Hit enter to run, use your up and down arrow keys to select from the list of files and applications that come up, use your left and right arrow keys to burrow deeper into the functions of a program. With another click, you have a menu of actions that you can take, other than opening the program or file (revealing it in Finder, deleting it, moving it, etc.). It makes launching applications a breeze for me, as I’m a rather keyboard-driven person, and it’s absolutely free.

2. Witch
In short, this application, which appears to be shareware but so far hasn’t prompted me to buy it in any nagging fashion, is to the Mac what Alt-Tab is to the PC. Tired of only being able to switch between applications rather than windows in a specific application? This fixes that issue quite elegantly, though you don’t get the pretty previews of application windows you do in Windows Vista.

3. VLC
Quicktime is a decent video player. iTunes is a decent audio player. VLC does both, and does them elegantly. If you want to play a song without adding it to your iTunes library, VLC is what you want to use. You also get “play pretty much everything including DVDs” format support, which is especially useful in today’s world of fractured video file formats. As an added bonus, VLC tends to be lighter on resources than Apple’s own products. Best of all, it’s free.

4. A different web browser (Firefox, Minefield or Webkit)
Safari is cool, but it’s not the fastest, nor the most compatible, web browser out there. Firefox is a bit more compatible than Safari in terms of how sites function, plus it has tons of “extensions” so you can customize the browser to your heart’s content. If you’re feeling adventurous, Minefield if Firefox but with a heaping helping of extra speed…and extra bugs. If you like Safari and find it works for you, get Webkit…it’s significantly faster and generally improved compared with Safari. Be aware, however, of the beta status of Minefield and Webkit; on Webkit you’ll be grabbing a 35-megabyte application download every night or two, and Minefield isn’t much better. As with most web broswers, these are free.

5. Something for running WIndows programs (VMWare Fusion, Parallels, VIrtualbox, Crossover)
Let’s face it: you won’t be able to run all the applications you need on OS X. Some programs just run better, or run, period, on WIndows. Probably the most high-profile ways to do this are Boot Camp (installing Windows alongside Mac OS and dual-booting) and virtual machine programs like Parallels and VMWare Fusion, which run around $60. There’s another way: Crossover Mac, which basically “fakes” Windows so programs of that stripe can run. Crossover honestly isn’t as reliable as a virtual machine program, nor is it as compatible with as many applications, however it is faster (to the point that Windows games will work on OS X) and cheaper (the program runs around $40 and doesn’t require you to buy a copy of Windows).

If you’re wondering when I’ll give a similar list for PC users, don’t worry…that’s coming soon. You could even run the five PC apps in a virtual machine on a Mac, if you can follow that. At any rate, once you’ve checked out these programs, you won’t know how you lived without ‘em.

Macbook Pro – Breaking the inch-thick barrier, the new 15″ Macbook Pro, taking cues from the Macbook Air and the newest generation of iMac, is 0.95″ in height and weighs a mere 5.5 pounds. These astounding specs stem from a manufacturing process pioneered with the Macbook Air: the body of the Macbook Pro is constructed from a handful of pieces of machines aluminum. The glass-covered LED-backlit screen is powered by either an nVidia GeForce 9400 or a 9600 chip, depending on whether you want four or five hours of battery life (both are included, and you can switch between them). The touchpad, also made of glass and tuned for the ultimate tracking experience, has no buttons and four-finger (!) gestures.

The new Macbook Pros start at $1,999 and also include the expected processor and memory upgrades from the new Intel Montevina system. The 17″ Macbook Pro looks to be untouched by these advances, but it is still available for sale on Apple’s website.

Macbook – Sporting the same striking construction and thickness as the Macbook Pro, the regular Macbook pares its weight down to 4.5 pounds. Its 13.3″ screen is now LED backlit and the graphics processor is the same nVidia 9400 that the Macbook Pro now uses to save battery power. Speaking of battery power, the new Macbook is billed as having up to five hours of battery life, despite having a smaller 6-cell unit on board than in previous models.

The new aluminum Macbook starts at $1,299 (less for academic purchases) and can be upgraded to a 128GB SSD for storage if you so choose, though this is an expensive option. If you want something less expensive, the previous generation of Macbook is still available, in its lowest-end iteration, for $999, a $100 drop overnight.

Macbook Air – The smallest, lightest Macbook available also gets processor and memory upgrades (all members of the Macbook series now have 1066 MHz DDR3 RAM), as well as a hard disk and SSD capacity bump (from 80 to 120, and from 64 to 128, GB of space, respectively). Finally, the display port on the Macbook Air has been standardized…it’s now a miniaturized version of the new DisplayPort standard, which allows for ultra-high-resolution video and audio to be output over one link. Pricing on the Macbook Air remains the same as the first-generation model.

Cinema LED Display – Sporting a 24-inch LED-backlit panel, the new Apple Cinema display is billed as designed for use with a Macbook. It has three USB ports, built-in iSight (webcam and micrphone) and built-in speakers. Its connection portfolio delineates its purpose: MagSafe for charging your Macbook, USB for turning two usable ports on the laptop into four on your desk, and a mini DisplayPort connector, which works with any new Macbook model. The price? $899.

That is, in a nutshell, what Apple introduced Tuesday, October 14th. Look for reviews of the new Macbooks here soon!