“The rumors are starting to trickle out on Apple blogs. AppleInsider says that Best Buy is expecting new Apple hardware in March,” Wagner reports. “New MacBook Pros will likely use Intel’s new mobile processors.”

“I’ll decide whether to buy a MacBook Pro when I see what Apple offers in its next generation,” Wagner reports. “I expect to buy an iPad when they become available next month. Maybe two; my wife is eyeing them hungrily. And I also expect Apple will come out with a new iPhone this summer, as they’ve done for the last three summers; and when they do, I’ll upgrade my iPhone too. So even if I don’t get a new MacBook Pro, Apple’s going to be getting a lot of my family’s money this year.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Direct link to video via YouTube here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Apple shipped about seven million notebooks in 2009 with most of the orders placed to Quanta and some to Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry),” Wang and Tsai report. “Apple’s monthly order volume to Quanta has also grown from only 300,000-400,000 units in the first half of 2009 to one million units in the fourth quarter of 2009, the sources noted.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

The reader is handy for transferring videos and photos from a camera, but you can also use the reader with an SD Card startup disk. This is helpful for when you need to troubleshoot the MacBook Pro.

Roman Loyola of Macworld provided a video on how to create a SD card startup disk for the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros. The video can be found in their Youtube channel: Macworld. Materials needed are SD card with a capacity of at least 8GB, and the OS installation disc that came with the laptop.

Download Macworld Video #114

• Format: MPEG-4/H.264
• Resolution: 480 x 272 (iPhone & iPod compatible)
• Size: 11.5 MB
• Length: 4 minutes, 3 seconds

Loyola’s Notes

“At its default settings, the Mac OS X installation for the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is over 11GB. You can reduce that size by opting not to install items such as printer drivers and language support. In my demonstration, I got the installation down to a little over 6GB. You’ll need an SD card that’s at least 8GB. (There are other ways to reduce the OS installation down, but I do not show them in the video.)

The SD card I used is the 16GB SanDisk Extreme III ($196). The 8GB version is $120. These cards are high-speed cards, which makes them more expensive than your typical SD card. But you can use a more affordable SD card.”

Source: Macworld

CNET

“We are aware of the issue and are working on a software update,” Apple representative Bill Evans, told CNET News on Monday. He gave no time frame for the release of the software update.

Users have been reporting that drives periodically make a “beeping” noise that is frequently accompanied by brief freezes of their systems.