This post was published 1 month 9 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.

The Apple  site is back up, with a whole bunch of solid if not overly exciting updates to existing products. Apple is taking the opportunity to do a few long rumored refreshes on products like the Airport and Time Machine as well as standardize more of theire line of MacBooks and MacBook Pros around their one piece look.

Most interesting of the updates was the Magic Mouse which replaces their old and not pretty dated Mighty Mouse. It is an optical bluetooth mouse that doesn’t have a scrollwheel since the entire top surface is multitouch Just gesture along the surface to scroll. .It seems to me that such a mouse would be hard to get used to, but once you did, it would be pretty cool if not terribly precise. The fact that it is optical rather than laser and (ERRATA: The Magic Mouse IS laser…mea culpa) uses Bluetooth, with all it’s failings, is one point against it for me as far as being an elite level mouse.

Of course the most interesting elements of this whole situation are both the timing and the way it was handled. After the massive wave of well deserved accolades yesterday due to Apple’s financial numbers, releasing so many minor products immediately after that sort of tour de force ensures that Apple will still get more than it’s share of headlines during Microsoft’s big release of Windows 7. Having shiny new MacBooks released right now also gives a little more bounce to Apple’s campaign to convince XP users to switch to Mac rather than upgrade. All in all, a well played marketing gambit by Apple while cleaning the deck of a lot of small releases.

I also feel that Steve Jobs learned a lesson at the last iPod event. Apple has reached the point that lackluster announcements actually hurt them. They have primed their faithful and the tech press to expect homeruns at every event. A bunch of singles or doubles just brings disappointment and criticism. There was no way that Apple was going to put up a press conference, let alone bring Steve Jobs out to announce new bodies for MacBooks and a Server version of the Mac Mini.

I am quite sure the next time we see El Jobso on stage will be when he has an Apple Tablet in hand, or a seriously major iPod or iPhone release. Until then, the new MacBooks look nice, so enjoy your Magic Mice, Apple fans.

Rate Post

(2 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5) -

Similar Posts

• What if there was only 1 Windows Mobile Phone?
• Apple – firmware update for its 17in MacBook Pro.
• Don’t Hate but that doesn’t mean "like" or "support."
• There is a NEW version of Quicktime
• Apple Store down

Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).