Apple has plenty to gain by adopting a super-fast WiFi network. Back in 1999 when Apple introduced the first Airport devices, people wanted to access the Internet wirelessly. High-speed Internet was just starting and you were lucky if you were getting over 0.5Mbs.

Today, the Internet is only a part of a wireless network. With gaming machines, tablet computers, media set top boxes, video is becoming a large part of wireless traffic. Web pages, email, and even music won’t tax a wireless connection. Video, on the other hand, can choke it if there isn’t enough throughput. Another benefit would be for those who have Apple’s Time Capsule, a network based backup solution for Macs.

There is a new standard and it was show at this years CES (Consumer Electronics Show). One standard being shown, and a likely candidate for the next generation of Airport devices, is 802.11.ac. This new standard uses higher frequencies and multiple antennas to get a top end just over 1Gbps.

Having this much speed in a wireless connection is just what Apple needs to put inside their Apple TV 2 device, or should I say the next one – the Apple TV 3. Of course to get the most out of this new WiFi standard, you will need a new WiFi router and adapters for all your computers. The next versions of the Apple TV, iPhone, Touch, iPad, and MacBooks will likely have the new 802.11.ac chips built in.

Just like the other WiFi standards, the new gigabit protocol should be backwards compatible with n, g, and b. There has been not announcement from Apple, but the chips should be ready by April, which is when the new processors should be available from Intel. Looks like spring will bring Ivy Bridge and Gigabit WiFi this year.

When Apple released the iPad back in 2010, the world went crazy – or at least it seemed that way. The iPad is a super easy to use Internet and entertainment device. With proper App selection and accessories, the iPad can even replace a laptop for some.

The first iPad seemed to have plenty of speed and graphics were excellent. Then Apple came out with the iPad 2. They redesigned the iPad making it thinner, sleeker (rounded edges), added two cameras, added 5x faster graphics chip, and a dual-core CPU. The iPad 2 has been a huge hit.

Apple has not officially announced the next iPad, likely to be called iPad 3. Bits of information have been leaking over the last month or so about what the next iPad will have. Many have stated that the iPad screen could definitely have a higher resolution. Using the same technology as the latest iPhones, the new iPad might have a Retina high-resolution screen. It might even have the newest mobile processor based on a quad-core design.

Now that MacWorld/iWorld is over, this is the tradeshow that used to be called MacWorld Expo, Apple has everyone’s attention as we wait for news of the next iPad. The sad part is that Steve Jobs won’t be on stage showing off a new iPad.

It happened summer of last year. Starting at the end of July, Thailand’s monsoon season started and they had the worst flooding in decades. Unknown to most, Thailand seems to be where the majority of computer hard drives are manufactured. Thailand’s monsoon season was devastating in the tragic number of lost lives. Property losses in key industries will also be felt for longer than originally believed. The hard drive industry will likely take a year or more to recover.

If you have been looking to get a new hard drive, either as an upgrade, backup, or repair part, you may have found that the price and availability of drives have changed dramatically. Just a year ago, hard drives were cheap and plentiful. But that has all changed due to the flooding in Thailand.

A year ago today, you could buy a new name brand OEM 1 TB (terabyte) SATA drive for $60. You could also buy 40 or them, if you wanted to. The end of 2011, the same 1 TB drive cost almost $150. Across the board, most new drives (of most any capacity) almost tripled in cost. The other problem was that retailers, online or physical store, have placed limits on the number of drives you could purchase at one time. Some drives were limited to one per customer. This is still in place today, but it is finally starting to recede. The flooding ended months ago, but the impact will likely be felt even into next year.

Hard drive production is back in place in the over 100 factories in Thailand. The online price for a single 1 TB drive is down to almost $100. The big worry is what this will do to desktop and laptop prices over the next year. PC makers like HP, Dell, Acer, and Apple buy drives by the boxcar. If their supply is strained and prices have increased, will computer prices start to increase this year? So far it doesn’t look like this has happened.

Apple is in an interesting position. They have started abandoning spinning hard drives for SSD – Solid State Drives. While these drives have less storage capacity, the speeds of SSDs have helped sell their MacBook Air line of laptops. With a new 15-inch model (not yet officially announced by Apple) rumored to be in the work, Apple doesn’t have to worry as much about lack of or pricing of spinning hard drives. HP, Dell, and other Windows PC makers live on such razor thin margins, the effect of the Thailand floods on the hard drive industry is hard to predict.

During the hour-long presentation, Apple showed three pieces. First is a new iBooks App for the iPad. Second is a new Mac App for creating interactive e-books. And third, they showed a renewed commitment to the under utilized iTunes-U. While some briefly held their breath hoping for the famous ‘…one more thing.’, Apple didn’t announce any updated iPad.

The new iBooks 2 is a major update to the original. Apple has added many of the necessary hooks to allow for greater interactivity inside an e-book. The new iApp can read all the books you currently have in your iBooks library, plus the new Epub2 format. This new Epub2 standard allows for added content like video, animation, and interactivity not possible in the original Epub standard.

To help in creating new e-textbooks, or any type of interactive title, Apple has released iBooks Author. This OS X App, available for free on the new Mac App Store, allows anyone to create and publish interactive e-books. This free program does however require the latest Mac OS, OS X Lion.

iBooks Author is similar to Pages, Apple word processor/publishing App that is part of iWork (or available separately in the new Mac App Store). Just like Pages, iBooks Author is a full WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) publishing program. There are pre-built templates to follow where you just drag-and-drop your images, animations, or even Keynote presentations on a page. There is also a powerful Glossary creator that is as easy as pointing and clicking.

The last part of the presentation covered iTunes-U. This part of iTunes and contains an amazing selection of lectures and lessons from universities and colleges across the country. This free content is amazing, and so far has not been used to its full potential. Part of the problem is that most of the people that have iTunes don’t even realize that this stuff is there, and it’s free.

Apple is adding more content to iTunes-U. Part of this push is to add high-school courses and lessons, not just college level content. To help in getting to all this educational information, Apple has created an iTunes-U App. This will allow users easy access to the iTunes-U. This is going to make it much easier to find courses to watch. Trying to navigate through the full iTunes App was quite tedious.

All of these Apps are available today and they are all free. A small selection of e-textbooks can be found in the new iBooks 2 App, but more will be coming soon (Apple has made deals with a large percentage of the textbook publishers). For those of us not still in school, the ability to create our own interactive e-books is compelling, but the ability to access free college-level courses from over 1000 universities is genius, no pun intended.

Most would say Apple had their best ever year in 2011. The good news is that they might have an even better 2012. The iPhone 4S is selling like mad and is now starting to be available globally. The Mac is making a mark for itself helping Apple move into the 3rd position in PC sales, according to research firm Gartner. Dell is 2nd and HP is 1st. Earlier in 2011, HP had announced it was thinking of getting out of the PC and tablet business but later retracted. This move did hurt their sales of PC – not a smart move. HP is ahead of Dell by less than 1 percent.

For the coming year, Apple has nothing to announce, yet. There is an event on Thursday January 19th in New York City. This is understood to be an education related event that will likely have to do with textbooks on the iPad.

Of course, most of the tech media know that there will be a new iPad and iPhone this year. There will also be updates to Mac desktops and laptops. These updates will likely only be bumps in speed gained from new Intel processors. The Mac lineup will likely not change significantly this coming year. The Apple rumor engines are starting to ramp up the RPMs. Let’s take a look at some of the more believable ones out there.

Big Air. Sometime soon it’s possible that Apple will release a 15-inch version of the MacBook Air. The Air is Apple’s ultra-thin but powerful laptop. The 11-inch Air that was released back in late 2010 was a huge hit. Then Apple revamped both the 11 and 13-inch models with fast SSD drives and the new Thunderbolt port and they become even more popular – if that was even possible. The obvious next step is to create a 15-inch version. This would likely be just a slightly bigger version of the 13-inch. The extra size needed to fit a 15-inch display would allow Apple to have better sound, longer battery life, and (dare I say it) more ports.

iPad 3. The next generation iPad is due to be announced any day now. Rumors are flying everywhere about how the factories in China are already producing them to have enough lead time to start selling them in the next month or two. The rumors are that it will have the same screen size but could use the same Retina display technology used in the iPhone 4/4S. This could mean that an iPad would handle HD content. It is also likely that the iPad 3 will have a new quad-core processor, jumping it ahead of the current dual-core iPad 2. Some rumors put the new iPad 3 slightly thicker, which could mean several things – larger battery, 4G data capabilities, other connectivity options.

iPhone 5. The latest iPhone, the 4S, is off to a phenomenal start. It did however arrive much later in 2011 than all other iPhone releases. Whether this was intentional or unavoidable only Apple knows. Remember, they did release the 4 for Verizon at the beginning of the year. Let’s hope that they will get back to a summer release schedule. As for the next release, most agree that it will be the much rumored iPhone 5 that was on everyones lips last year. The iPhone 5 will likely be larger with at least a 4-inch display (the iPhone 4S has the smallest screen of current smartphone models at 3.5-inches). It will also likely have the same three carriers and add 4G data access. Siri will likely be expanded to allow voice control over more of the phone functions and Apps.

Mac Pro. This is a sore subject for some professional Mac users. They are the ones that need lots of RAM, extra storage space, card slots for extra features (HD video capture for one), and professional video output. The Mac Pro is also the only Mac that was not updated in 2011. There were new Mac Pros in 2008, 2009, and 2010. The rumors for the Mac Pro go two ways, depending on your glass being half empty or half full. The half empty crowd thinks the Mac Pro is going to be removed from the Apple desktop line. This would make the 27-inch iMac ‘top-dog’. The half-full crowd thinks that the Mac Pro will be released sometime very soon when the new Intel ‘Ivy Bridge’ processor is available. The one thing that both groups feel is that the Mac Pro may not live too much longer on Apple’s product list.

What I’d Like to See.  Now that I’ve filled your head with the rumors I’ve heard and read, now I can fill it with my own nonsense. There are a few things that I’d like to see Apple do this year. First is the bring back a mini with an optical drive. Make it an option, or whatever, but bring it back – please. Why they got rid of the optical drive is ridiculous. Yes, maybe in two or three years we won’t have any need for an optical drive (how often do you use a Zip disk?), but I still use mine all the time.

Keep Final Cut Studio Pro 7 in the Apple Store for 2012. After enough video pro users cried murder, Apple re-released FCS 7 through its phone sales channel. It is not currently in the Apple Store, and I couldn’t confirm that you could still buy it at 1-800-MY-APPLE. While Final Cut Pro X is an amazing pieces of software at an amazing price (trying to get as many ‘amazing’s here as possible), it is not FCS 7. I used to use iMovie 6HD, but then switched to Final Cut Express when iMovie changed. I have dropped my FCE for the new FCP X, but I’m not a ‘pro’ editor. The real pros I know and others I’ve talked with have a proven workflow with FCS 7 for broadcast video production and they felt that Apple had abandoned them completely.

If Apple drops the Mac Pro tower I’d like to see a bigger mini. Apple needs to make a desktop solution that isn’t built into a monitor. Yes, the Apple monitors are great. We have several 21.5-inch iMacs here at work and I know several people who have the 27, which is amazingly gorgeous. But there are those out there that want a Mac desktop that’s not an ‘all-in-one’. I’d kill to see a Mac mini tower that has the power of a mini or iMac but is the size of a toaster – just a box that could hold 2-3 hard drives and a good video card. Having a couple more slots for expansion cards would be ideal. It could run the same processors in the iMac or mini (core i5/i7). I wouldn’t care that it didn’t have server-class processors. I know this is only a dream and will never happen.

2011 was the year of the iPad. Even with several major players entering the fray, they all fell well short of what the iPad is and can do. Android tried to hit the market running with new tablet models from Samsung, Acer, Toshiba, and Motorola. HP tried to start something with their WebOS they acquired when they bought Palm. RIM, the makes of Blackberry phones, tried their own tablet running their own mobile OS called QNX. Both HP and RIM didn’t sell and both ended up slashing prices just to get rid of store stock.

Big Hits for 2011.

Apple iPad 2 was released back in March and was not just a faster iPad but was a whole new design. The 2 was thinner and a bit lighter. It still had great battery life, while boasting a faster dual-core processor. The biggest changes were the much faster graphics engine and two cameras, one in the front for conferencing and one in the back to shoot stills and/or video.

Apple also made improvements to the very popular MacBook Air. This is Apple’s smallest and lowest priced laptop model. Apple took the Air from last fall and added the new Thunderbolt port and switched to the faster Core i5 processor (a Core i7 is a custom order option). With the white plastic MacBook now gone, the 11.6-inch MacBook Air at $999 is the low-end machine.

The rest of the Mac lineup, except the Mac Pro tower (and I’ll get to that a little later), got bumps in speed with Intel’s new Sandy Bridge line of processors. This year we say the first quad-core laptops from Apple. Sandy Bridge brought better performance with the same low power consumption. Part of the Sandy Bridge processor is a new integrated graphics chip, the Intel 3000HD. Going with Sandy Bridge meant that Apple had to switch the dedicated graphics chips from nVidia’s GeForce series to AMD’s Radeon. While the switch to AMD can be seen as an improvement, the models that rely on integrated graphics lost out. The previous chip, the GeForce 320M, was slightly faster. The Intel might have a slight power advantage.

The latecomer in 2011 was the next iPhone. Rumors were flying throughout the spring and summer about the next iPhone – mainly what it was going to be called 4S or 5. It finally arrived and was the 4S and looked just like the 4. Inside the phone there were some nice upgrades, but not nearly enough to make iPhone 4 owners overly jealous.

The iPhone 4S had the same dual-core processor found in the iPad 2. The screen hadn’t changed, but the cameras did. The front facing camera was the new FaceTime model and the rear camera jumped to 8MP with better HD video. What really got people excited was Siri. Apple took (bought) an existing App and service and created an amazing voice controlled assistant. Siri could tell you directions, read your text and emails, change your music, and according the all the videos on YouTube, give smart and funny replies to your silly requests.

The iPhone also got a new carrier. The big four are Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. The iPhone is now available on all of these except T-Mobile. Sprint is definitely not as big as AT&T or Verizon, but if you are in a coverage area where Sprint has high-speed data, you will be delighted to know that Sprint has totally unlimited data on the iPhone. The problem is that Sprint’s coverage is far less than AT&T, who has less than Verizon.

Of course the year wouldn’t be complete without new operating systems. Mac OS jumped to 10.7 with the introduction of Lion. The mobile line jumped to iOS 5. Both of these new OSes brought new features, with Lion getting some of the look and feel of iOS. Lion brought some nice new features – Launch Pad and Mission Control. Together with some new gestures started to make the mouse seem antiquated and a track pad more desirable.

The new mobile OS, iOS 5, brought some needed changes, and fixes, to Apple’s mobile platform. Many of the included Apps were revamped – Mail, Calendar, Safari (a big improvement), etc. Plus there were some new features added. A much improved notification system, Newsstand, wireless syncing, computerless activation, iMessage, and Airplay mirroring.

2011 also brought two new services from Apple – iCloud and Music Match. Apple announced their aging, and never quite right, MobileMe service would end sometime in 2012. To replace it, Apple came up with iCloud. Not just a new MobileMe, iCloud can do some of the things that MobileMe tried to do, like syncing bookmarks, mail, calendars, etc., but then added a bit more to the mix. The big thing that iCloud brings to the table is the ability to run an iPad without having to own a computer.

Before iCloud you had to activate an iPad/iPhone/Touch with iTunes on a Mac, or PC. While many iPhone/Touch owners are also Mac or PC users, this wasn’t too big of a deal. But the iPad created a whole new category of Internet devices. People who don’t own, or don’t want to own, a computer wanted an iPad. With iCloud and the new iOS 5, this is now possible. It can also be used to back up an iOS device, for those without computers.

The Mac App Store really took off in 2011. Apple modeled this after the App Store for the iPhone/iPad. The Mac App Store was the only place to get the new OS X Lion, along with some other Apple titles. The Mac App Store made it easy to find, buy, install, and update software.

Misses in 2011.

The biggest miss in 2011 also topped most of the news stories. This was the passing of Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. In the beginning of the year, Jobs took another medial leave from Apple. In August he actually resigned as CEO of Apple opting to be chairman of the board. He passed away at the age of 56 on October 5. He will be deeply missed at Apple and in the tech/movie/music industry as a whole.

So on with our misses. Some of these are actually hits and misses. This means that so far they haven’t shown themselves to be a hit, yet. The first is ThunderBolt. This is a new interface created in conjunction with Intel. It was originally named Light Peak, since it was to be based on fiber optics. When Apple updated their desktops and laptops with the new Sandy Bridge processors, they also included new Thunderbolt ports. This version replaced the mini DisplayPort connection. On the new Macs, Thunderbolt is said to have a throughput of 10Gb/s and can have multiple channels. While most Macs have only one port, the new27-inch iMac has two. The miss is that there are not really any peripherals that take advantage of this new super high-speed port. Hopefully 2012 will be the year of ‘thunder’.

Another miss is iCloud. It does have some benefits – its free, similar functionality to MobileMe, unties iOS devices from a computer, etc. The problem is that Apple really didn’t make it clear exactly how iCloud works and what you can and cannot do with it. While some Apple Apps work with the new iCloud, most third party Apps do not, but could if rewritten. So it’s up to these other App makers to adopt iCloud. If they make it, they will come. Let’s see if anyone comes. Most iOS Apps take full advantage to other cloud services. The most popular is Drop Box, which is the one that Apple is really competing with here.

Another miss, at least in my book and others I bet, is the new Mac mini. I love the mini and this year the mini got the new Sandy Bridge processors, but it lost its slot load SuperDrive (CD-RW/DVD-RW/DVD-DL burner). This move might be smart for Apple sometime in the future, but I think it’s just a bit to premature. Yes, we are buying our media online. Yes, we can now buy our software through the Mac App Store, which I love. Yes the price dropped 100 bucks even though it’s faster than last years model. But really, no DVD burner included. Swing and a big miss.

This last year was pretty amazing for Apple. They became the most valuable company, in the stock market, in the world. They have hit products with music players, smart phones, and tablets. The Mac is stronger than ever. The big news – next year looks to be even more interesting.

Homerun. 

Elgato makes some of the best video devices out there, and they are all Mac based. They have small USB devices that either capture video, or have TV tuners. For a while now I have been using they amazing Elgato EyeTV 250 plus. This is a small external box that can connect to either video sources or to a cable/antenna. With it I can record TV shows to my Mac’s hard drive making it similar to a TiVo – basically a DVR box. The big difference is that I can edit out commercials and easily burn shows to a DVD.

Elgato has a new TV tuner in their lineup called the HDHomerun. Instead of connecting directly to a computer using USB, the HDHomerun connects to your home network.  This small box has only three ports – cable/antenna, Ethernet, and power. However, inside there are actually two tuners. Just install the EyeTV software on all your computers on your home network (Mac and Windows) and you can watch and record your favorite shows anywhere you are connected to you home network. It can even work with most 802.11n WiFi networks. Two tuners allow two computers to watch and record two different channels at the same time.

Recording shows can’t be any easier. The EyeTV 3 software includes one year of TVGuide online programming (after the first year it is a $19.95/yr subscription). To record a show just find it in the program guide and click the little dot, which turns red to indicate it will be recorded.

After you have recorded a show there is a basic, but decent, video editor that makes it simple to cut out the parts you don’t want, which of course could be the commercials. The EyeTV software also works seamlessly with Roxio Toast allowing you to easily archive your shows to DVD, or even Blu-Ray with the proper burning hardware.

As an added bonus, Elgato has an iOS App that allows you to watch either ‘live TV’ or shows you’ve recorded and converted. The iOS App is available from the App Store for $4.99.

If you love TV and have more than one computer in the house, the Elgato HDHomerun is a great gift. Street price is around $180.

Windows

There are two ways to run the Windows OS on a Mac. The easiest way to do it is with virtualization. There are three virtual programs out there. There is the free Virtual Box from Oracle and commercial Apps called Parallels Desktop 7 and VMWare Fusion 4. Virtualization allows you to create a ‘virtual’ PC machine where you can install practically any PC OS you’d ever want – Windows XP, Vista, 7, or even the free various Linux versions out there.

The other way is to use Apple’s technology called Boot Camp. This is included in all new Macs, it actually started back with a beta version for OS X Tiger (10.4). Boot Camp will set aside a portion of your Mac’s hard drive to install Windows Vista or 7 (some versions of Boot Camp can install XP). There are drivers for your Mac on the reinstallation discs included with your Mac.

Once you have Windows installed using Boot Camp you will now have another start up selection in the System Preferences panel. This is where you select what drive to boot from. On my Mac I have Mac OS set as the default startup drive. If I want to run Windows all I have to do is hold down the Option key while I turn on my Mac. This will bring up the ‘startup disk selection’ screen. I just select the Windows disk and it will then boot fully into Windows 7.

Since this is not virtualization, my Mac is no longer a Mac it is a full Windows PC. This method of running Windows is great when you need a full speed PC, since it doesn’t have to share resources like screen memory, RAM memory, etc. Booting fully into Windows also means that video, sound, networking, etc. is really there and not a simulation, which virtualization sort of has to do. Playing PC video games is another reason to use Boot Camp for running Windows.

No matter which method you decide to use, you will have to purchase a full copy of Windows (Windows 7 Home Premium street price around $190 but versions can be found for much less). Boot Camp is included with all new Macs. Virtual Box is a free download from www.virtualbox.org. VMWare Fusion 4 and Parallels 7 can be found as low as $40 and $50 respectively.

Ultimate Control. I have been a big fan of the Logitech Harmony line of universal remotes. If you have one then you know what I mean. There are several Harmony models to choose from and can range in price from $50 to $350. But to say that a Harmony is just a universal remote is like saying a Porsche is just a car.

For those who have a fairly complicated home theatre system, there can be five or more remotes you have to use to watch or listen to something. The Harmony remote should replace all of them. The only time you should have to pull out the remote for a device is if you have to change some deep menu settings – things you probably only have to do once or twice a year.

The idea behind the Harmony line of remote controls is two fold – programming and usability. Most universal remotes have a huge table of codes that you have to program in to get it to work with your device – TV, VCR, DVD, receiver, etc. This can be a tedious ‘trial and error’ process.

To program a Harmony remote you connect it to your computer with a USB cable, after installing the Logitech software. The software will then walk you through an extensive, but easy to follow, setup procedure. You will need to know the make and model numbers of all the components in your home theatre and how they are interconnected. This is probably the hardest part.

Once you have the Harmony properly programmed the magic starts to happen. The best part of a Harmony remote is the function buttons. The number of function buttons varies on the model, basic ones have four and upper end remotes can have six or more. The function keys are used to perform, well, a function. It really depends on your system, but on my Harmony I have function buttons set for – Watch TV, Watch DVD, Watch Blu-Ray, Watch Netflix, and Listen to Music.

What really happens when you push one of these function keys is all part of the magic. On my system when I press the ‘Watch TV’ button it goes through these steps: turn on TV, turn on receiver, set receiver to TV input, turn on cable box, set TV to HDMI input 2. With just one button, the Harmony remote performs the same functions that would of taken three remotes and a whole lot of buttons being pressed. The idea behind all this is that anyone in your house doesn’t have to know how your system is connected – like which device is plugged into what HDMI port on the TV and what input the receiver needs to hear the audio from the cable box. Someone visiting your home won’t know all these things and the Harmony eliminates the confusion.

There are two Harmony remotes that I recommend. The best deal is on the Harmony 650. It can control up to five pieces of equipment and has a nice color touch screen. If you have more than five components to control then take a look at the Harmony One. The Harmony One also has a color screen but can control up to 15 devices and uses a rechargeable battery. The 650 is a bargain this holiday season with a street price around $55. The Harmony One with battery and charging cradle is priced around $140.

Moving Pictures.

There are two ways to get video out of an iOS device. Some older model iPods have a special cable that connects to the headphone jack that has the standard red, white, and yellow audio/video connectors (composite video). This cable allows the device to be connected to a standard-def television, monitor, or projector.

Later model iOS devices use the Apple 30-pin dock connector. Depending on your model, this could be the standard composite video, HDMI, and even VGA. Check the Apple site for compatibility. The latest Touch/iPhone/iPad2 have the widest choices in outputting video.

With the proper cables and/or adapters, the iPad2’s screen can be mirrored to an HDTV, projector, or computer monitor. This is great for presentations, training, or even just movie night.

So today’s gift is a video output cable for iOS. This can be the Apple Digital AV Adapter, Apple Composite Cable, or Apple VGA Adapter ($29-$39).