Friday, March 18, 2011

Apple MacBook Pro MC721LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop Review

The update to the 15-inch MacBook Pro in February 2011 was significant. Indeed, significant is an understatement. Quick thanks to Amazon and Apple Stores for having these immediately available at launch.

The primary upgrade to this revision? The processor! Intel has a brand new architecture called Sandy Bridge, and these MacBook Pros are the first Macs to feature this technology. Some have called it some of the most significant changes to Intel architecture since Pentium 4 was introduced. These 15-inch MacBook Pros as well as its big brother, the 17-inch, not only take advantage of Sandy Bridge, but the Quad Core i7 Variant. Quad Core processor in a notebook Mac! Wow.

I actually chose the 13-inch model for my personal use (only Dual Core on the 13-inch), but this 15-inch is replacing an aging iMac at the office to save space and leap over its performance. These Quad Core Chips are amazing. Early benchmarks are showing this entry-level 15-inch, 50 percent faster than the upper end i7 15-inch MacBook pro from a year ago. A dramatic improvement. Furthermore, if you're still on a Core 2 Duo machine such as the iMac I am replacing, the performance is as much as 2.5 times faster. At least in terms of the processor. This is most beneficial in processor intensive applications, for consumers such applications are iMovie and Garageband. Professionals will see the new processors beneficial in any professional photo editing, video, or music work.

One downside is that due to cost, the machine still comes with a spinning hard drive standard. In this case, the standard drive is a 5400 RPM 500 GB drive. That offers plenty of storage, but is slightly slower than a desktop 7200RPM drive and much slower than a new, solid state drive. You do have options. You can special order the machine from Apple with a 7200RPM drive, or Solid State Drive. However, what I have decided to do, is simply, when I'm ready, swap out the drive myself. Other World Computing sells solid state drives compatible. It might not be easy for every user, but for those with some computer experience, it is a fairly easy swap. Then I can install a faster solid state drive, when the more acceptable capacity drives come down a bit in price. You might also choose to do the swap yourself because you can then put the hard drive that was originally in the machine, into an external enclosure, and use it as an external drive for backup. Of course, any damage you cause to the machine would not be covered under warranty. Therefore, if you have any concern, you might want to see if you can special order from Apple online, or in many situations, you will find the standard hard drive to be acceptable.

After the processor advancement, Thunderbolt is the other great new technology included in this revision to the MacBook Pro. Thunderbolt looks like the Mini Displayport that was already included on the MacBook Pros. Indeed, it will still function perfectly as a Mini Displayport, for connecting an external display. However, Thunderbolt is more importantly a new interface to connect external devices in the future, such as, external hard drives, HD camcorders, and perhaps even iPads, iPods, or iPhones someday. Data would then transfer many times faster to and from these devices than it does currently. These devices were not available at the time of the MacBook Pro's launch, but we have already heard that external drives should be available later this year with Thunderbolt connectivity.

iSight camera has been upgraded to HD resolution and Face Time pre-installed on the computer. This gives you the ability to video chat, easily, with other Macs and notably, iPhone 4s and the newest iPod Touch with front facing camera.

The consumer software you expect to be included by Apple is once again here. The latest version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard (operating system), iLIfe 11 including iPhoto, Garageband, iMovie, iDVD, and iWeb is all here. OS X always includes Safari web browser, iTunes, and Mail applications too. The average user would be good to go out of the box. You might pick up Microsoft Office for your office document needs, or simply purchase Apple's iWork applications (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) from new Mac App Store on your computer.

The new MacBooK Pros, thanks to Sandy Bridge technology are fast. They will save you time, when using processor intensive applications. Time in business, saves people money and frustration. The average consumer might see less gains with this update as physically the MacBook Pro has retained it identical appearance, size, and weight. Nevertheless, under the unibody, improvements have certainly occurred which result in a much faster notebook. The fact that these 15-inch and 17-inch models now include Quad Core Processors standard is really extraordinary. This is putting recent top of the line desktop performance, into a sleek and attractive Mac Notebook. A breakthrough. Recommended Product!
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Friday, March 11, 2011

Social Media Marketing for Dummies

I always look forward to the latest installment of the such-and-such for dummies books, so I eagerly awaited my Amazon.com pre-order of Jan Zimmerman's and Doug Sahlin's Social Media Marketing (all-in-one) for Dummies. Even better it proclaimed it was eight books in one. The book is fantastic, even if it does suffer from the usual forest-vs-trees issue. It is much more a "trees" book with lots of details on each social media venue, but still a great book.

By "trees" I mean it gives you the details of each social media marketing venue: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, etc. For each, the authors do a nice job of overviewing the venue, and explaining the basic steps of how to create an account, what you can do with it, etc. It's a great survey of the entire Social Media Universe. Importantly, it is a critical, skeptical, ROI point of view vs. many of the simple cheerleading or laundry list books on Social Media out there. I really liked that.

By "forest," however, I mean the big picture / strategy of Social Media. The book DOES have information on building a Social Media Marketing plan and DOES have some useful case studies, but there is often just too much text and too many details. I teach Social Media Marketing (online and in San Francisco), and I have experienced that my students are just overwhelmed with the details. Less is often more, as they say, and this book could have used a re-write on the chapters on making a social media marketing plan. Missing in particular is a clear explanation of which social media venue fits which business need best.

That said, if you combine this detailed book, with some "higher level" marketing strategy... And, for example, you pre-think WHY you want to Twitter (Facebook, Youtube, MySpace, LinkedIn), and WHY your potential customers might care to listen / converse with you... You will have a dynamite combination. Don't be afraid to realize that perhaps you don't NEED Twitter - that Youtube is a BETTER fit for your company.

This book has earned its place on my reference shelf, for myself and my students in Social Media Marketing. For more on me, just click on my profile or Google Jason McDonald plus Social Media. I love comments and feedback, and I try to read as many new SEO, Social Media, AdWords books as I can.

Enjoy!
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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

How To Create iPhone Apps

There’s a funny fact about gadget users: they get bored easily. What do they do then? They try to find ring tones, games, and new applications to jazz up their gadgets. One of the most popular gadgets at present is iPhone. This sophisticated mobile phone has millions of users worldwide. Now how profitable can it be when we know how to make great applications for iPhone?


Mike and Quoc can answer that for you. Together, they have generated over 10 million application downloads and raked in over $65,000 in December 2009 ONLY. Under Thinking Drone, LLC, Mike and Quoc has published over 22 applications and been listed as #1 application in Photography and Utilities category many times. Now they want to tell you how you can achieve the same, or even better result.

If you have great application ideas but you don’t know how to get started, you have to seek a good guide. Mike and Quoc offered you one of the best guides there is, How To Create iPhone Apps. It’s an ultimate, step-by-step guide on how you can make iPhone apps without having any programming ability.

You have two choices in making your apps. You can create them yourself or you can hire someone to do it for you. Mike and Quoc suggested that you take the second option because you will:
  1. Not waste any time. Your application is being worked on while you’re doing anything else.
  2. Have the chance to allocate your time and resources for something else like marketing the apps or getting new ideas.
  3. Get the pressure off your shoulders. No more codes and bugs to deal with.
These are the topics that you will learn from How To Create iPhone Apps:
  1. Techniques, Tips, and Resources on how to find reliable, less costly, and high-quality developers
  2. Apple‘s application requirements
  3. Tips and tricks on making money from App Store
  4. How to get your application noticed once it’s published
and many more…

But not only that, you will also get 3 valuable bonuses when you purchase this product. They are:
Free source codes to use as a template before or after you get your apps from your developers. You need it to change certain codes before submitting to Apple. This guide provide you with screenshots and step-by-step guide on what you have to do.
A bonus chapter on how you can make money from free apps
Protect your ideas from other people, including your developers.

If you are a creative person with millions of ideas in your head, you should make use of the opportunity to make money from creating apps. With this guide, you no longer have to think of the HOW. What you need to think is only WHAT.
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Monday, January 3, 2011

$10 Million Dollar Online Business... [How To COPY It]


If you haven't heard about this already, you REALLY need to check it out for the following 7 reasons...
  1. Amoung inner-circles, this is known as the best kept secret in internet marketing. (I agree)
  2. It has been running for nearly 2 years, over 5000 people have been *in the know* and almost 100% of the time, they are all AMAZED.
  3. It turns our that parts of this were directly reponsible for the success of three of the top peforming affiliates in the Clickbank network.
  4. This stuff has made these guys millions. In fact, these resources are exactly what they use to maintain and expand their $10 million dollar business.
  5. It is one of the most incredible deals ever...something that most people would charge up to $1000/month for.
  6. Once in, everything discovered is shared with this privilaged group... (which could and should include YOU).
  7. No matter what type of online business you have, I believe that this could SERIOUSLY affect how successful you are over the coming weeks, months... even years.
You need to watch the video which explains everything VERY carefully in order to make the correct decision (this is VERY time sensitive and VERY important).

thanks & speak soon,

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