Decked out on three elaborate levels containing ‘everything-Apple’, it was a geek’s ultimate night out in the Sydney CBD! The atmosphere was spectacular to say the least: bright lights, free Internet and of course the now-famous, Applesque glass-staircase.

Apple's legendary staircase

What never ceases to amaze me is the amount of detail and attention Apple places on it’s products – the humble iPod, iPhone, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, and obviously the ‘hot’ Cinema Displays. However, the crowning achievement of the night was definitely the amazing architecture, design and ambiance of the store itself!

I was lost for words when even the walls themselves were adorned with a shiny, ‘Macbook Pro-like’ feel to them. Yep, no white paint here at all. Everything was where it was supposed to be – any doors were recessed as to not look ‘out of place’ and even the lifts screamed Apple! It was definitely an awe-inspiring moment or two.

A monumental apple hung from the ceiling of the interior leaving passers-by with no need to guess what stood before their eyes.

For those who have not yet been or cannot make it – here is the run-down of what you can find on the three levels.

Apple Store Sydney Level One (Ground Floor)

This floor is filled with every Apple computer you can find under the sun! From Mac Mini to iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, Mac Pro and Mac Cinema Displays [Phew, that was a mouthful!] as well as housing some software.

Apple Store Sydney Level Two

This floor is filled with everything iPod and home-entertainment. From Apple TV to every current generation iPod; including the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, Classic iPod and of course the iPod Touch. You can also find the Apple Hi-Fi on this floor and a range of other iPod Hi-Fi systems from Bose, Belkin, Sony and more. This is the level that also houses pretty much all software and even hardware you can buy for your Macs, ranging from ‘The Sims II’ game to the Mac Air’s Superdrive and laptop bags.

Apple Store Sydney Level Three

This floor holds more computers and cinema screens as well as the renowned Genius Bar, which has finally made its way to Sydney! Here you can get help with almost anything-Mac from Mac experts, as well as ask questions ranging from how much money the ‘Genius’ thinks Steve Jobs raked up last financial year, to ‘What is automation in Mac OS X?’ Also on this floor free one-on-one training sessions are run ranging from ‘How to use your new Mac’ to an ‘Introduction to iLife’.

If nothing else, the view from this floor alone of down-town George Street is crazy!

Overall, I found the new Apple Store, Sydney – which as a little tid-bit is the second biggest Apple Store world-wide; to be a man-made design marvel. Not only was it pretty on the outside, but the interior design is strictly Apple in all senses of the word! I mean even the tables were gorgeous – and believe me when I say that office furniture generally doesn’t do anything for me!

You’d have to be gobsmacked not to feel a sense of achievement that Apple would have felt upon completion of this masterpiece in all its forms; inside and out.

If sales from the first three days of operation are anything to go by (let’s just say they can close down for another year and still be profitable!), then this store is really going to be crowning achievement of Apple’s time in Australia.

Looking forward to seeing how the next one to open in Chatswood is going to look, but for now – Geeks beware! There’s a new place to hang out!

Check it out for yourself:

Store hours:

Mon – Wed, Fri, Sat: 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Thu: 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Sun: 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Genius Bar:

Mon – Wed, Fri, Sat:

7:00 a.m. – 9:00pm

Thu:

7:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.

Sun:

9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Till next time!

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I needed a new computer for work and as you might already know I am a sucker for Mac – so what did I do? Go out and get a Macbook Air, of course!

Overview

Coming from a 24″ iMac and I guess to a certain extent, a ‘smaller’ 15″ Macbook Pro, I was hesitant that I would have a hard time getting used to the 13.3″ – albeit, wide-screen display. Boy was I wrong!

The 13.3″ screen is so much brighter than I am used to – that it even looks brighter than the iMac’s screen – which is bright!

I was worried that the specs on the mobile notebook would not be enough for what I needed – something powerful enough to handle PSD’s and other design documents (and obviously run those applications!). What I found out is that even at 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo, this little notebook is a small beast.

Day-to-day running

Sure, applications take just a little longer to load and when saving big Photoshop files, you might have to wait an extra few seconds – but all that is relatively minor nuisance when considering whilst the application is running there really is no major difference between this notebook and the higher-end Macbook Pro’s; showing that the 2Gb RAM actually does help a lot and you could say, makes up for the somewhat-slower CPU.

I won’t be running games on this lil’ thing anytime soon – but if that’s the reason you are getting this notebook then you are going to be sadly let down. With shared graphics, the furthest I want to take this masterpiece of design is Flash production.

Battery life

Battery life on this machine is very, very good! I’ve come from a few issues with past batteries; especially as an early-adopter of the 15″ Pro. I find that on a full charge with full brightness and functionality as standard I can get at least 3.5 hours in. Drop down the brightness and change Energy Saver Optimization to ‘Better Battery Life’ and you might just found out that the Apple-claimed 5 hours is not just a marketing ploy!

Design

Being a web design blog I figured that this would be a huge part of this review. I’m not going to lie and not say that one of the main reasons I got this notebook (as apposed to other similarly-specced notebooks on the market) was the form-factor and design. It just simply amazes me and others how small this little thing is! Sure, you miss out on the benefits of a CD/DVD drive (you can still use another computers’ drive through Remote Connection!), and you might have the iPod’s 80Gb hard-drive entailed, but boy does it look HOT HOT HOT!

The keyboard, is definitely THE best keyboard I have EVER typed on! Not only is it evenly-spaced, and full-sized, but it is back-lit, just like its predecessors – which makes it awesome to type on at night!

The trackpad is SUPERB to say the least. It is huge compared to every other laptop I have seen, whether 13.3″ or 17″ in size. The new gestures you can make now, coming off the iPhone/iPod Touch platforms are not only a time-saver, but cool!

For example, you can scroll down a page if you run two fingers simultaneously in a downwards direction; or if you wanted to get a little more geeky, run three fingers side-by-side from the right to the left of the trackpad and quicker than you can say ‘Bob’s your uncle’ it has taken you back a page in your browser or while using Coverflow to look at your doc.

So to wrap this up here is my top pros and cons of this marvelous piece of technology.

Macbook Air Review Wrap

Pros

• Incredibly thin and light and yet sturdy
• Very bright, LED, back-lit 13.3″ screen
• Amazing keyboard and trackpad
• You can remote connect to another computer/notebook to use their CD drive
• Good battery life
• Mini DVI
• Wow factor

Cons

• Relatively low on connectivity options (compared to Macbook’s and Macbook Pro’s)
• No Ethernet (RJ45) , only one USB 2.0 port so get yourself a USB hub if you’re buying one!
• Slower than other Macbooks

There you go guys, hope you liked the review. I will upload more photos as soon as I have some time. Thanks for reading! Make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed.

Whether or not it’s considered a feature of the highly usable browser, if you set a style of ‘background-color’ on an form input, the default shine and coolness that is Apple’s Aqua – is gone! Gone I say! *Shock, Horror*

Safari seems to as nicely as possible, make the background colour, in the case as shown below, hex code #a8ddf8, literally that colour. Cool you might think? I dunno. Always been a fan of the whole simplicity side of Aqua’s interface – especially the drop-down’s form inputs and how they are custom-designed (very much bullet-style!).

On another matter, In Safari 3 on Mac OSX Leopard, (ahh, Leopard!) if you assign a background color to inputs, Safari likes to remove the aqua-style imprint on the buttons and replaces that with flat-button style to replicate the color you’re you wanted. Ingenious? Annoying? I guess that’s subjective. However, there’s a surefire way to get around it… Either create a new class for inputs with background set to none; .inputsMinusBg { background-color: none; }, or, simply kill the background colour.

Till next time…