MacBook Pro 17-inch battery replacement plan

One item from Philnote which I didn’t touch much on was the announcement of the new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro that comes with the new in-built battery that Apple claims can run up to 8 hours and takes 1,000 charges. With it shipping only after 4 to 6 weeks, we still won’t know how much mileage Apple’s claim goes.

But they have announced the cost of replacing the battery should it fail. AT US$179 (pre taxes), which comes up to something between S$270-S$300 for the battery to be replaced. So just hope those “claims” are somewhat close, or it will be expensive to replace them.

New Google Quick Search Box

If you are a QuickSilver user on the Mac, you will be familiar with Google’s new Quick Search Box. Quicksilver allows you to search, launch applications and many other functions via a few quick key-presses, all within a small window that pops up when you activate it. Quick Search Box, now currently at beta, works similarly. Hit a key combi and a small window pops up over all other window on your Desktop and you can key in search terms to look for items on the web, or applications on your Mac.

The similarities are not surprising as Nicholas Jitkoff, of QuickSilver fame, is part of the team behind this new project from Google Code. As it is still in beta, do try it at your own risk and help develop it by contributing to the app’s Discussion Group. Download here

3rd Party web browsers available in App Store

Weeks back we constantly read reports about Apple dismissing applications for iPhone apps that replicate apps made by Apple, eg Podcaster, Opera web browser.

But just the past week, new web browsers appeared in the App Store – Incognito, Edge Browser, WebMate and QuickSurf – each appeared to provide web surfing functions like Safari.

Besides the basic web surfing, some apps attempted to differentiate themselves with features not available in Safari, with less hits than misses. For example, to key in the URL for Edge Browser, you’d need to exit the app, go to the Settings section to fill the URL, just to get full screen browsing. Or Hot Browser comes with a “shake” the iPhone to get a randomly hot site.

There will definitely be more such browser apps coming up but if it ain’t free, I don’t see any reasons to switch from Safari.

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