One of the most exciting moments in any nerd's life is getting a new computer. For Mac nerds, being as passionate as we are, that moment is doubly exciting. Today it was my turn as my new MacBook Pro 13" turned up.

A couple of months back I wrote about the difficulty in affording Macs for a lot of people, and me in particular being on government benefits. So you're probably wondering how I can afford a MacBook Pro. Well, since then, two things happened. Firstly I discovered a no interest loan scheme for low income earners.... Secondly, I had been saving for several months for a Mac mini and was half way there (AU$600). So all up, I could then afford an MBP 13 with a 4GB RAM upgrade....

I haven't used this anywhere near long enough yet to be able to make any definitive conclusions. But... I am loving it!

The users spoke. Apple listened. Back in October 2008, the Cupertino-based computing giant released a 13-inch MacBook featuring its unibody enclosure, carved from a single piece of aluminium for lightness and strength. But for some reason, they dropped the FireWire port. The Apple community was up in arms. With FireWire having been included in almost every Apple Mac for over a decade, many – perhaps most – Mac users had at least one peripheral which used FireWire, and were dismayed to find it missing on the new MacBook. Less than a year later, in the summer of 2009, Apple upgraded its entire range. The aluminium 13-inch MacBook joined the Pro range, and the FireWire port returned, alongside a brand-new built-in SD card reader. Hurrah!

But the new 13-inch MacBook Pro offers far more than new and returning expansion ports. It boasts improvements across the board, as well as a significant price drop…There really isn't much to complain about here. Given the... across-the-board improvements and the drop in price, there's never been a better time to buy a MacBook.

There's an old saying, widely attributed to Will Rogers, that describes three types of people: "The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves." In matters of technology, I'm a proud member of the third group. As a perfect example, I'm writing this article from the smallest Mac OS X laptop I've ever used: It weighs just under 2.4 pounds, and is only 9 inches wide, 6.7 inches deep, and 1.3 inches thick.

When Apple introduced its new MacBooks recently, it touted a doubled battery life - but noted that the laptops' batteries were sealed into the case, not user-swappable as is the norm on laptops.....

At first blush, the idea of a non-removable battery in a laptop seems ill advised. After all, batteries are absolutely key to laptops, and everyone has had a laptop with a battery that just won't hold a charge, requiring you to be no more than five feet from an outlet. In those cases, it's simple to buy a new battery and install it in a few seconds....There's also the case of those who work in remote locations -- such as war zones -- where wired power may not be readily available. In extreme cases, the ability to swap batteries there can mean life and death....
Given the potential problems, why would vendors seal in batteries?

Apple boss Steve Jobs is back at work following six months of medical leave, although he will work from home for part of the week, the company says.

Steve Jobs has returned to work a full day before Apple's oft-promised "end of June" deadline.

Jobs, though, is not back in a full-time capacity. Apple chief executive and co-founder will instead be a part-timer until further notice. The company refused to say how many days a week Jobs will be putting in.

Apple's Time Capsule, building the equivalents of an AirPort Extreme router and either a 500 GB or 1 TB hard drive into a single unit, is a space-saving and easy-to-use way for users to combine a wireless base station and storage accessible over a home or small business network - and even across the Internet.

However, many users already have either a wireless base station (also referred to as a wireless router) or an external hard drive - or both. And Time Capsule is a relatively expensive way to add storage, even when added to the price of Apple's high-end AirPort Extreme.

Intel is expected to bring forward the projected doubling of its SSD capacities to as early as next month....

The current X18-M and X25-M solid state drives (SSDs) use a 50nm process and have 80GB and 160GB capacities....Intel will move to a smaller 34nm process and double the capacities with the 1.8-inch form factor X18-M and 2.5-inch form factor X25-M (M meaning Mainstream) moving to 160GB and 320GB capacities....

The Mac OS X Finder is a sitting duck for criticism, so I won't bore you with an attempt to list its faults; indeed, after so many years, I'm usually numb to it, like a bad smell that one stops noticing. But the other day, when I was swearing with particular vehemence at the Finder - was it because the Get Info size of a certain folder was mysteriously much smaller than the combined Get Info sizes of its contents, or because the Open With contextual menu for a file was failing to display the application I wanted to open it with? - I threw in the towel and decided to give Cocoatech's Path Finder another try....

I've been using Path Finder 5.1.3 for several weeks now, and, quite without regard to the relative merits of the Finder and Path Finder, I'm astonished at how much more fluid and productive I am with Path Finder.....

If you, too, are weary of the Mac OS X Finder's frustrating shortcomings, its lack of intelligence, nimbleness, and complaisance, then you owe it to yourself to give Path Finder 5 a try....

Japanese-headquartered motor globocorp Toyota says it has achieved and tested working "driver brain wave control". So far, however, it envisages the handsfree driving tech being used only in wheelchairs, rather than its roadworthy vehicles.

Whenever Apple releases a new product, folks will sacrifice one of these gadgets in order to dissemble the component parts and attempt to determine their identity and cost. On the basis of this information, and a few educated guesses, we're supposed to know exactly how much Apple really spent on each unit.

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