WD's Refreshed My Passport Portable Drive Series Get A Unibody Treatment

Western Digital, also known as WD, has revamped its My Passport and My Passport Studio external portable hard drives for Mac users to boast an ever sleeker, new sturdy all-metal slim enclosures. It's obvious WD is trying to target tech savvy students who are in love with Apple's aluminum fantasy world of quality products with its raw silver on black aluminum designed My Passport drive. The My Passport for Mac is available in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB storage capacities starting at $99, and is compatible with Apple Time Machine and includes WD Security for password protecting and hardware encryption. 

The My Passport Studio on the other hand is targeted towards professionals needing faster transfer speeds, and for that the My Passport Studio has dual FireWire 800 ports which are the only thing setting the two drives apart, and of course the price. The My Passport Studio starts its price at $129. Both drives sport a USB port and are also USB powered. Sorry, no Thunderbolt capabilities quite yet. You may want to hold out for a bit longer for thunder speeds.

iCloud Revealed, Offers Free Storage & Streaming Services

Along with Apple announcing iOS 5, Mac OSX Lion, they have announced iCloud. iCloud that will backup your apps, songs, books, photos, videos and contacts. You will be able to have access to any of your information from any device whether it is a tablet, phone, or laptop/desktop. This will be taking over Mobile Me and the apps have been rewritten. iWork will be playing nice with iCloud, and app history, device settings, new photos, purchased music will all be automatically over wi-fi. The iTunes app for the iCloud will be available as the end of today. Contacts and mail and calendar store will be free, while some of the rest will be paided subscriptions. The rest will be announced.

10 New Features in Mac OS X Lion

Along with Mac OSX Lion, over 250 new features will be available in the new OS. Apple showed 10 main new features of Lion: multi-touch gestures, full-screen apps, mission control (unifies Expose and Spaces), iOS type Launchpad, system wide resume feature, Airdrop (peer to peer file-sharing), and a brand new version of Mail. These are just some of the main features Apple showed, but I am sure there will be more. We will go into more depth once Lion is released.

Lion Mac-App Store Only, $29.99 4GB Download

At WWDC 2011, Apple has announced today that Mac OSX 10.7 Lion will go on sale in July for $29.99. It will be bought in the Mac App Store, no more boxes/cd. The download will only 4GB which won't be bad, and will be able to install on 5 of your auth'ed computers. Developer preview will be available today after the keynote.

Icon for iCloud

Apple is hard at work in San Francisco's Moscone Center preparing for the Worldwide Developer Conference 2011 that will be held there next week. Apple Insider snapped some pics of them setting up the convention hall. Inside there is a huge banner that has Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud icons hung up. They usually do not show any of the banners till the day of the Keynote, but this one is public and easily seen. WWDC 2011 Starts on Monday. Let's see what Apple brings to us.

Apple Releases Third Developer Build of OS X 10.7 Lion

Apple has just released the 3rd build of OS X Lion via Software Update that is 1.22GB. Apple gave no details about what changes or any fixes that come in the latest build since it is not the full-fledged 'Preview 3'. From tests the updated features include snappier Finder, better UI for deleting apps from Launchpad, and many more design tweaks then the previous DP(Developer Preview) builds. Also included in the update is an update to Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 4. Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is set to release this summer(not that far off) and will likely show many of its features at WWDC 2011 in San Francisco which starts on June 6th.

Apple Patent Featuring Sound Based Commands

 

Another new Apple Patent is showing that the company wants another way to input commands. In the patent you could swirl your finger over a specific area or scratch and this would drive a certain command on the device. The patent outlines that this could be done by listening in to the housing itself or just keeping an electronic ear listening to the sounds of touching the surface. This probably wont be in any new products anytime, and this is probably just is research.