There’s no doubt that Apple manage to create a dramatic stir with product announcements, and it is always thrilling to watch the news articles roll in during a MacWorld Keynote. The MacBook Air was undoubtedly the most exciting announcement yesterday, with some expected features and some not so expected. The main question in my mind is who the laptop is aimed at, and who’s likely to buy it.

No optical drive?

At present, there are three ways to get music on your laptop - legal (downloading via iTunes), more or less legal (ripping from CD’s), and completely illegal (downloading from Bit-Torrent or elsewhere). Apple have more or less taken the middle ground out of the equation yesterday in the MacBook Air. People moving to Mac for the first time, planning on ripping their library of CD’s into iTunes to use on their iPod/Apple TV etc are going to be a bit stuck!

£1,199

That’s just ridiculous. Really. If Apple chose to equate the pricing to that of the USA, it should cost £900. That’s a perfect price point - smack between the MacBook and MacBook Pro. As it is, for £100 more than a MacBook Air you can get a base level MacBook Pro. For me, the decision would be a categorical no brainer. Whilst the thinness and weight of the MacBook Air is a huge bonus, it just doesn’t compare in any way to the power and features of one of their Pro laptops.

So, who will buy them?

First of all, I’m sure this laptop will be successful. Not on the scale of their existing notebooks, but certainly to some extent. I think the people who will fork over £1,200 will fall into two categories:

1) Business users, who need a second machine for traveling and working on the go. This is absolutely perfect, has great battery life, and will fit their needs to a tee.

2) People who just love style. Let’s face it, the laptop looks amazing. If you love being the centre of attention and crave others wanting to get their hands on your latest gadget this is perfect.

To me, it seems that Apple have found success well beyond what they anticipated in the iPhone. I’m sure they knew it would be a resounding success, but the sales figures must have been even greater than they predicted. They are now benefitting from much greater economies of scale, and are able to produce the phone at a cheaper price. Couple this with the introduction of the iPod Touch which will bring even greater economies of scale and Apple are looking at an excellent financial outlook for the life-cycle of these products.

The price drop will have come because Apple are simply in a position to do so. They’ll be producing the device cheaper than at the outset, and will have decided that it is worth the risk to reduce the price and aim for a higher market penetration with increased sales in the lead up to the Christmas period. This is an excellent business strategy, and is likely to pay off for them. I can see their market share increasing dramatically over the coming months, and no doubt Steve will be reporting as such at the next major Apple conference.

Now has never been a better time to look into buying an iPhone, and I really hope that these price reductions will spread across to Europe around the product launch. If it is introduced over here with a similarly excessive markup, we’ll need to make the difficult decision of whether to buy and be an early adopter, or wait for a similar price drop to the USA.

I’m very surprised at the decision of Apple to offer a $100 store voucher to all those who have purchased an iPhone so far, but feel that it’s a remarkably ethical move from the company. I feel that Sean Sperte summed this up well:

Consider the statement he made during the music event on Wednesday, that Apple is on track to sell their one-millionth IPhone this month. Now consider multiplying that number by 100. Let’s just say, for example, that Apple will be giving away 600,000 store credits in the amount of $100 each. That’s $60M worth of “sorry”, and plenty of “we owe you one”.

Think about that. What other company has ever come close to voluntarily giving that kind of money back to its customers? Apple truly is one of a kind.

They are indeed!

It involves a Macbook, Ikea desk, tropical plant, additional screen and Logitech Mac Keyboard & Mouse:

I’ve always been a fan of the Simpsons, but must admit that I found it most appealing when I was younger. Recently, I’ve preferred cartoons like Family Guy as it’s just a little bit more ‘intellectual’. Maybe not the right word to use, but it does appeal to a slightly more sophisticated sense of humour. When news of The Simpsons Movie leaked out, I was fairly indifferent - obviously hoping that it would live up to the phenomenal success of the cartoon.

I went to see it last week, and was suitably impressed. There weren’t all that many laugh out loud moments, but I definitely had a good chuckle all the way through. As I hadn’t seen the cartoon for a while it brought back lots of memories and was almost a little nostalgic! The animation was as ever excellent and they also introduced a 3D element which I’ve never seen in cartoons. It gave the movie a unique twist which it deserved.

The plot of the movie centers around the environment, pollution and recycling. I can almost imagine the brainstorming session where they decided that the plot needed to be relevant to the problems of today - environmental management was an obvious choice. That said, it worked well and the story flowed well in the essentially wacky Simpsons format.

It’s a great movie for children and adults alike, and certainly lives up to the cartoon. It won’t go down in history as an earth shattering success, but it’s enjoyable and will make you laugh. I was humming the “Spiderpig” song for quite a while afterwards…..

Our Stock Works is a fully completed stock photography website which launched in 2006. It currently has over 8,000 photos, and 600+ contributors who have uploaded images and are registered on the website.

What are we selling?

The sale will give you all the rights to Our Stock Works, including:

> The domain names ourstockworks.com and ourstockworks.co.uk
> All database files
> All website (PHP and HTML) files
> All photographs (over 8000)

Please note that the photographs are not being sold to you - the rights to these remain the photographers, but you have the ability to market and sell them under the ‘Our Stock Works’ banner.

We have a hosting agreement with a provider which offers the technology required to run the website and 40GB disk space and 150GB bandwidth per month, for 43 (around $80) pounds per month. We recommend keeping this package as the website is designed to run on this server - but you can obviously move elsewhere if you wish.

The website uses PHP and MySQL, and an advanced knowledge of these is essential to take over and run the website.

Read more

As one of our valued PayPal merchants, we would like you to know in advance that PayPal will soon be adopting a brand new look.

We thought it will be useful for you to know about this sooner, especially if you have a website, so you can prepare to use the new PayPal logos and buttons.

What to do

If your site features hosted buttons and images with PayPal logos, you don’t need to take any action. These will update automatically.

If you host buttons and images with PayPal logos, we recommend that you replace the current images on your site with the new ones. In a few weeks when the new images are available, we’ll send you instructions on how to download them from our website.

Why it’s important

We’ll be educating all PayPal customers about the new look. By updating your images soon after the day of launch, you will let your customers know you are a current PayPal merchant and it will help them feel safer making online purchases.

PayPal is such a cornerstone of modern online trading, any alterations to the design of their site will be interesting. Will they be adopting more standards based design? Integrating some more AJAX and front-end functionality? We’ll have to wait and see - should be interesting.

The Financial Times is reporting that O2 will be the carrier of the iPhone in the UK. It’s a debate which has been going on for an awfully long time now, and I would be very surprised if FT would go to press with something they weren’t more or less 100% certain about.

I’m fairly indifferent with O2 being awarded the contract. I’ve had both good and bad experiences with them as a customer, but spent some time doing work experience with them a year or two ago and was impressed with how the organisation is managed internally.

The main thing I’m keeping my fingers crossed for is a data and call package which relates to the one offered in the USA. A sentence which worries me is:

The contract, which was signed by three European mobile operators in recent days, requires that the operators hand over to Apple 10 per cent of the revenues made from calls and data transfers by customers over iPhones.

I hope that the revenue from data and calls originates from the contract, rather than any additional fees for data usage. I feel strongly that an iPhone without unlimited data included would be a serious time waster, and it may even put me off purchasing one.

Let’s hope O2 pull the stops out and set a new standard in carrier service with the iPhone!