Apart from the big ad campaign about the size of the newest edition to the mac family, I’ve don’t really know much about the air, not because there’s no info out there on it, but because I haven’t gone looking for it. Ive not got caught up in the hysteria that normally surrounds the apple releases of recent, which got me thinking; why is this? Have I subconsciously told myself its not worth it? So I have taken it upon myself to see what role this new macbook fills.

So lets start from the ground up, the size of this machine is quite astounding, not that it is a tiny compact machine, but as I’m sure you are all well aware the thickness of it, which is only beaten on amasement value by the miracle of the ipod touch (well for me anyway). And the general asthetics of it are too inline with apples current style so nothing groundbreaking there, but what is really making waves is the cd drive, or more to the point the lack of one. “Whats going on here no CD drive on a laptop? was it built in 1995?” I hear you cry, well apparently you have to fork out another £65 on top of the £1199 you just paid for the damn thing, you would have thought they might have thrown one in! its either that or you could use the new capabilities of the air to borrow the hard drive of another mac, which is a great feature but you would already have to have a mac, and probably wouldn’t need a new one.

Ontop of this the air has a rather strange lack of ports, apple only opting to put a USB port, a mini dvi port and a h/p jack into a small flap on the underside of the air. Which raises the point of the lack of a firewire port, which in turn means you cant transfer all you files and preferences onto you new machine. This certainly raised my eyebrow. On a plus note Apple have incorporated the touchscreen features from the iPod touch into the touchpad of the air, which greatly enhances the navigation power of the touchpad, so thumbs up there!

Right so where does the air fit into the market, well it certainly does not lye with the music producers and designers who have come accustom to the macintosh o/s, as they crave the high power that this machine just does not have. And the lack of a CD drive will probably not bode well with consumers switching from a windows laptop or PC, as you cant put any of your music cds or programs you already have onto it and you definitely cant burn cds without having to buy a plug in burner. So who does that leave us with, seems to me that the only people who are going to buy this are those who have a main machine at home and want something to take when there out and about, perhaps your designer types or maybe just your run of the mill apple fanatic (you know the type who cry when they get the newest iPod) but it certainly wont be on my christmas list this year.check out the you tube vid: 

My typical route to work every morning consists of driving for 30 mins to Central London, parking up at a car park at Aldgate east (£11 a day - great value) and taking the tube to st James’ Park. Every morning I manage to pick up a copy of the Metro to have a quick flick through and today I found this artical.Tom Middleton wrote this nice little piece as a quick introduction to producing for those who aren’t familiar with it. and it did make a nice little read for me. Heres a couple of little grooves from the man himself, just to prove he does know what hes talking about

Shinkansen

Big Girl remix 

We heard of the news last month that Microsoft had beaten of rival internet giant Google in its bid to buy a share in Facebook and we also heard recently that Facebook is going to launch its version of Myspace music, Facebook Music.With the ever increasing popularity of facebook as a social networking site, it seem only natural that artists want a page on facebook to showcase there music and spam us all with there latest releses. Artists already use the iLike application on there facebook hompages to do so but the new version of facebook is supposedly going to make it much more user friendly for everyone. So we’re more than sure that the Myspace executives are getting a little hot under the collar. Were positive Myspace wont fade into nothingness straight away but it seems with the ever increasing popularity of facebook and the ability to throw sheep at each other with the “Superpoke” application that Facebook music may take Myspace’s crown as “(instert artists name here)’s fan club website”, as that is basically what myspace is, one giant fan club!So onto the next point why was Microsoft so desperate to buy that share? the BBC tells us here how much was paid, and its alot!There is speculation in technology circles that Facebook launching the music pages and the looming launch of the Microsoft Zune mp3 player in europe is one reason the bidding war was so bitter. Is the most popular download store on the web about to be upset by the social networking phenomonon? Push Music believes it could be about to happen. If the guys at facebook are worth there salt, they would have realised what a goldmine they may be sitting on. By offering legal downloads over Facebook music and allowing only the Zune to play them, just as iTunes only allows the iPod to play its downloads.The next few months could prove to be an interesting time for the music industry, so could we see a MySpace and Apple colaboration any time soon? who knows but it certainly would make sense for Apple to tap into the established artists pages on MySpace, and we think this may be a viable solution if Apple wants to stay ahead of the game.

Perhaps the most anticipated product of 2007 has finally hit our stores, the iPhone was finally unleashed to the British public last night at 6:02pm, but what we want to know here at Push Music is what does this mean for podcasting?The newest Apple product to hit the stores did certainly cause a stir, with many people forming an orderly oh so British cue, outside London’s flagship Apple store for hours. So what is all the fuss about? The iPhone is really an iPod with a phone taped to the side, isn’t it? Well apparently not, it’s really Apples version of the PDA / smart phone. With the main advantage over just having a separate iPod and phone being you can surf the web over a wifi or wap connection. Sadly Apple decided not to take advantage of the high speed 3G system, Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) said on this matter “The 3G chipsets are real power hogs”.So to the main point what does this mean for podcasting? As that is what Push Music is all about. Podcast Pickle, one of the nets leading podcasting sites, announced there mobile site (www.podcastpickle.com/mobile) when the iPhone was released in the states, which is good for us Brits as the site has already been de-bugged and is running smoothly, allowing you to easily search for podcasts while your out and about.But what about actually downloading podcasts while you’re out? Well the iPhone has the capability to download music files over the mobile version of safari but sadly I feel Apple have missed a trick by not having automated downloads to the mobile version of iTunes, especially as you can download music tracks. You would have thought that would have been a no brainer but apparently it has been a big oversight. so if you did want to get the latest pushcast on to your iPhone you would have to download it at home and synchronize you iPhone or manually view it in mobile safari.One definite plus on the Podcasting side of things is the apparent ease of creating podcasts with your iPhone, “It turns out one of the things the iPhone does really well is record podcasts. The combination of the adaptive multi-rate format, the iPhone speakerphone, and ad hoc recording scenarios produces a surprisingly solid outcome when combined with the freely available Levelator tool”. So creating podcasts using you iPhone can be done but we can’t really see how we would use it seeming to create a podcast we need all our mixers and decks!So over all we feel the iPhone is a huge jump forward for Apple and is sure to prove hugely popular with users no matter what its pitfalls may be, but there is certainly much room for improvement with this phone. In hindsight perhaps these apparent oversights are just the beginning of future marketing tools for the new versions of the iPhone? But surely a multi million dollar organisation such as apple wouldn’t try to fleece it customers like that would they?