The MacBook Air that was introduced in October of 2010, the 13.3-inch and 11.6-inch MacBook Airs were a hit. They are small, light, portable, and were capable of handling larger programs like PhotoShop and even Final Cut. The MacBook Pro line consists of the 13-inch, 15-inch, and the mighty 17-inch. Now why have two notebooks at the same size? So we can wave good-bye to the portable but powerful machine, the 13-inch MacBook Pro. But if we get the 13-inch MacBook Air with Ivy Bridge, and more SSD space, we basically have the Pro but in a smaller and even more portable package, for the same price! I will take a slice of that!

Now onto the 15-inch MacBook Pro. This will get the Ivy Bridge set of processors, probably the i7 if Apple does drop the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Apple looks like they are going to cram in the Retina Display into this new line of Mac notebooks, but recently there were a few posts talking about the cost of this decision. Of course, when you pack more pixels in a display the price will obviously go up as well. There was a number thrown out, currently Apple spends $68 for 13-inch Pro and $69 for the 15-inch. If they were going to be Retina displays, the figures go to $134 and $160. A pretty big difference. Now if you are a sales manager, you would just say let’s increase the price of the product. The demand will be there for our displays since they look so good. But we don’t think Apple will go up this route. I’m almost certain that Apple got some special deal for these displays and the prices will stay the same. The MacBook Pros will start at $1,799 for the 15-inch model, the same price they start currently. The MacBook Airs will start at $999 for the 11-inch and 13-inch model for $1,299. Now the MacBook Pro 13-inch starts at $1,199 so maybe there is the one hundred dollar difference.

We expect Apple to not change the pricing game, I think their prices are at the sweet spot for consumers and they don’t want to play the Jeopardy game with that. We will find out soon enough, June 11th is the Keynote at WWDC given by CEO of Apple Tim Cook! We will be live from San Francisco covering the event!

Video Review (Short Clip)

Design

The Volvo C70 is a sensible, noble thing. It has lines that you might notice on a sunny day. For some you may call it some car but Volvo has been doing this for the past three decades. The Volvo C70 is meant to be a car that is driven by someone that doesn’t want to show off. It looks great in opinion, roof up or down, but when the roof is down, the looks go up to 11. It’s a very nice car with the roof down, it actually looks like a proper four-seater convertible, unlike others. There are slight bulges in the wheel arches, the rims are also quite nice to look at, but maybe we can let go of the black? It doesn’t feel Volvo at all.

Power

The Volvo C70 has a few different power options. There is a few five-cylinder options, a few diesel options, and this one. The full out five-cylinder turbo-charged engine. It produces 250 BHP and 273 foot pounds of torque which can push it along briskly. Its not going to beat any sport cars on a track but passing maneuvers on the highway will be a breeze for the engine. When the Turbo kicks in at around 4,000 RPMs, the noise is very nice. I can always appreciate a great turbo noise. Now the power bonus isn’t tremendous, its a lower pressure Turbo that adds 30-40 HP max, but its a good jolt. 0-60 comes in around 7 seconds which is fast enough for anyone that will be driving this sort of car.

Handling

It’s Swedish which means it has one of the best feeling steering systems. When driving you really are aware of what the two wheels are doing up front, when its slippery, you know when they lose traction and start slipping. Going through curve filled roads is a blast, this car is excellent for some canyon roads, I just wish we had a canyon close to try it out myself. Now we have one real complaint about the C70… Torque steer. When you ask the front wheels to deal with 250 BHP and steer, its a massive conflict. If you accelerate with no hands on the wheel, you’ll turn right. Its not the worst case of torque steer, but this is why rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive is a better option for any vehicle.

Transmission

The C70 comes equipped with a five-speed automatic transmission, which at first I thought wouldn’t be enough gears, but I was wrong. The changes are smooth and the loss of power between switches is unnoticeable. It does have a selective shift mode but its not engaging at all, I would just leave it in automatic for those drives. Its more enjoyable that way.

Ride Quality

Volvos have been known for their ride quality and the history has always been positive. Usually Volvos take the bumps and imperfections of the road and you barely notice them. The C70 is the same way, any bumps on the road, you will hear it instead of feel it in the suspension. Its a bit stiffer for the sportier treatment but its not in AMG territory where you break you’re back every time you go over a bump. Inside its a quiet cabin with the roof up. There are no gaps for which air to come in and give you that annoying wine. Its almost as quiet as the Buick Verano we tested a few weeks earlier. It’s a fabulous job by Volvo.

Wrap Up

Volvo’s C70 has been a fabulous car to drive. It’s given me some looks but its pretty discrete. The car rides properly, grips the road, revs beautifully, and its a calming experience driving. It’s a car for someone thats looking to go on long journeys, sometimes with the roof up, and sometimes with the roof down. The five-cylinder engine is a tab too thirsty, but its better than my personal G35 which I would take in a heart beat. It’s one great car, but its a shame that Volvo is dropping this model next year. If I were you, I would grab this car before it goes. It’s fantastic.

PayAnywhere is an application that let’s you make your own store with merchandise, sounds like the others. But this one has a few tricks up its sleeve. It will automatically put in the tax for you and the percentage you keep is unlike the others. To start off, there is no fees when you sign up. When you open a merchant account, they will ship you a free card reader that works for iOS, Android, and now BlackBerry. You’re account will be processed and approved (if you’re 18 or older) in 5-7 days. My account was approved within 2 hours, thats some service. You enter all your tax information, bank information, and you are done and ready to start selling. Starting a transaction is as simple as it can be, and when you’re done, you can email receipts which the preset in PayAnywhere is very professional. The application is also AirPrint friendly so if you want a physical copy, just AirPrint it to any printer capable.

Now with PayAnywhere there are no monthly fees. Its completely free to use the application. They only take 2.69% + $0.19 per transaction but your first $1,000 in sales will go completely to you which is also very nice. There is no termination fee if you close your merchant account and there is no monthly minimum. It makes this terminal application a very user-friendly and stress free application for people who don’t see very often. Maybe a few transactions per month. The money is direct deposited to your bank account with 5 days which is very convenient.

PayAnywhere is my favorite payment solution, I’ve used it for a few weeks now and I’m very impressed. Its very accurate and it makes transactions a whole lot more interactive and easy!

But unfortunately there were a few draw backs with that setup. For one, if for some reason your engine dies, you no longer have power steering, and if you have ever driven a car with no power steering you know exactly what I’m talking about. Its god awful, its you moving hundreds of pounds on a steering wheel, its much work I tell you. Also, the fluid, called Power Steering fluid will need to be flushed out at several intervals, now this isn’t a bad thing, but its another maintenance task you have to put on the list. Its actually very easy to do it yourself, just Google it.

Now Electric steering, its a weird idea but works. Instead of using hydraulics to move the steering wheel, there is no steering column connected to the wheels. Its a steering wheel with sensors, sort of what’s inside a PlayStation steering wheel for Gran Tursimo 5, sort of weird huh? The sensors will know where the steering wheel is and send that to an electric motor which turns the front wheels. Now this allows for a much more light weight steering wheel. It makes cars a breeze to turn, and its more reliable, as long as you have electricity running through the car, you have steering.

Now at this point you’re probably cheering on electric steering but what about if you’re a gear head? Us gear heads love analog connections with our cars. Its a bonding experience and most of us can’t bond with a PlayStation. Electric steering tends to be numb, not analog. It gives you the feeling that you’re just a passenger that can control the car occasionally. If you are driving, I want to be involved, not being an organic piece of luggage that it lugs around from point A to point B. With hydraulic steering, you have a sense of whats going on with the tires up front (ask any rear-wheel drive car drivers). When a wheel goes into that pot hole, the steering wheel gives you that feedback, with electric, nothing happens. You feel it in the suspension but not in the wheel. When your tires are fighting for grip, the hydraulic setup talks to you, they start screaming, the wheel shakes and loses traction. Electrics just don’t give you feedback which is disappointing, and what’s more disappointing is BMW and Porsche have went to an electric setup and when I drove the Carrera S (991) 911, it didn’t feel like a 911. It felt odd, which is a shame. That’s one thing that electric won’t give… for now.

WWDC starts June 11th so if we are looking for a confirmed answer, we will know in less than a month! Stay tuned for more coverage on this topic.

The Galaxy Nexus back then was a fabulous device, it really won the hearts of the people at Gadget Experts. It was sleek, fast, and very exciting to use. Now take in a few months of OEMs making devices and the HTC One series making its debut in the states, the excitement is sort of gone. The ultra-high resolution screen isn’t so revolutionary, Android 4.0 isn’t so rare. I’m afraid to say that the Galaxy Nexus is a bit forgotten? Maybe it’s just us.

The Galaxy Nexus has the same internals as the Verizon model. It is a little rearranged to accompany the CDMA radio for Sprint’s network but the guts remain untouched. It has a 1.2GHz Dual-Core processor pushing it along briskly, the 1GB of RAM is a joy to have when multitasking from app to app. It’s a fine piece of kit but when you compare this to the HTC One, you just seem a little disappointed, we think they waited a tad too long to release this for Sprint. The EVO 4G LTE is right around the corner while this thing debuts. We don’t understand why people would buy this instead. One thing that we do ilk about the Galaxy Nexus for Sprint is the lack of bloatware. The Verizon model came packed with Verizon applications that ruined the pure vanilla Android experience, hints the Galaxy Nexus device, why load crap on there? On Sprint’s version, you find only the Google applications that they intended to have on there, nothing else.

To sort of wrap up our thoughts here, the Galaxy Nexus is still one of our favorites. It was the first phone with Ice Cream Sandwich which is a badge its never going to lose and its the best pure Android experience out there. But we have come to a time where 4.0 is more common along other manufactures and OEMs have built fantastic devices to run Google’s precious 4.0 software, the HTC One for example. We think the One devices are the best Android experience period. The Galaxy Nexus waited too long to make its debut on Sprint’s network, it was good last November, but its no longer good today. We still love it, but we love the HTC One more as a power house than the pretty Galaxy Nexus.

[Source: PocketNow]

Active Siri

Active Siri is sort of our speculation on what the next Siri might be like. Active Siri will be an active version of Siri, always listening on looking at the user, sort of like S-Voice with the Samsung Galaxy S III. Instead of holding down the home button, you can say, “ What’s the weather like Siri? “ Siri will then come up and give you an answer. Also Siri will be looking at your eyes, so when your eyes go off the screen, the display automatically dims down to preserve battery life, and when you look at it it will go back up for your reading pleasure. Now these features have already made there way on the Galaxy S III but if we see these on Apple’s beloved device, it may be a big hit.

Siri used in Apps

If Siri comes out of Beta which we expect that it will, we can see APIs for developers to use Siri in their applications. This will open up a whole other section of possibilities for applications. Applications like games where you can now put voice input, applications like PhotoShop Touch, you can say things to change the picture. It would honestly be a great addition to any application. It would also make hands free applications truly hands free.

Changes in the Springboard

If you are not familiar with what a Springboard is, just look at your iPhone’s application home screens, that is a Springboard. Its been the same for the past 5 years and its getting a tad boring. People have brought the rumors of Apple adding widget based home screens into play but that just doesn’t seem Apple to us. It wouldn’t be something revolutionary, it would be something taken straight from Android. Now even though the Notification Center is taken right out of the Android playbook, Widgets would probably file a lawsuit. Apple doesn’t want to go down that path knowing that they would probably lose that battle down the road. But there will be minor changes in the Springboard, to accompany the larger screen size and resolution, an extra row of applications would look very nicely, instead if the four up, four across, and the dock applications, it would be five up, four across, and the dock applications of four.

Apple Maps (iMaps)

Its not really a rumor, we know that Apple has been working on their own Map/Navigation application, iMaps is something we just made up. But It feels like Apple is trying to get away from everything Google including Google Maps. We think that the Apple client will be more compatible with Siri in different ways. It could be fully operated by Siri alone and no touch inputs. It would give directions, maybe even Augmented Reality to compete with the Lumia 900’s Augmented Reality in Nokia Drive. It would be their answer back to any Maps application out there. We fully expect to see the debut with this generation of iOS.

iOS 6 is going to be the largest release of iOS 6. I’m sure they’ll market the crap out of it. Its going to give out the most APIs to developers, the most new features to developers, and it will truly revolutionize the way people use their iPhones with full Siri integration. It will be fully natural, it will listen to you, look at you, and respond to what you need. I sound like an Apple marketing agent, but iOS 6 is going to be big. I can feel it.

QNX is found on the BlackBerry PlayBook, its one of the most reliable softwares ever made, hospitals use them for monitoring systems and those are important. RIM and QNX have started a venture on finding new homes for QNX, not just the mobile side, what about cars? QNX is being installed in vehicles like crazy and one of those vehicles is the Porsche 911 Carrera S. In the cars dash is a 7-inch touchscreen, basically a PlayBook built in the dash. From here you can access the web, navigation, emails, just about anything really. You also have two more PlayBooks on the back of the driver and passenger seats for the kids to watch, not like they can fit in the back. This whole system is integrated and you can do just about anything with it, its a cool idea, can’t wait to see this in my car! Check out the video above.