Throw away the Stormtrooper costumes, your Count Dracula capes and fangs – this is THE Halloween costume for this year!

World’s first award winning “working” iPhone costume created by Reko Rivera and John Savio. Specifications are 42″ Display, 1.5 Hours of Battery Life, 85 lb and the “real” iPhone can charge connected to the USB on the display. The two costumes have 3 batteries each with a total runtime of 4.5 hours before needing to be charged overnight.

Watch the video to see them in action!

Following Apple’s announcement of their most profitable quarter ever, they announced a whole range of new products just in time for the upcoming holiday season.

iMac

The all-in-one iMac is updated with a new enclosure as well as internals. You will immediately notice the screen is bigger compared to the previous generation. The iMac now comes in two new sizes, 21.5 and 27-inch displays. The most obvious change is the screen size. The 21.5-inch version features a high resolution 1920-by-1080 pixel display (which is full HD), and the 27-inch features a staggering 2560-by-1440 pixel display.

Internally, the iMac is refreshed with a faster processor, topping off with Quad Core i5 and i7 chips for as a custom option for the 27.5-incher. The graphics card, RAM and hard disk is also upgraded. And now, the iMac ships with wireless keyboard and the new Magic Mouse as standard.

The iMac is available in Singapore at the Apple Store on 28 October for the Core 2 Duo version, starting from S$1,788 and the i5 and i7 iMacs will begin shipping in November.

Mac mini

The Mac mini also saw an update. It looks the same as the previous generation’s and comes in 3 configurations. First is a 2.26GHz Interl Core 2 Duo with 160 Gb hard disk, the second is a 2.53GHz with a 320Gb hard disk but the last one is a nice surprise.

Apple configured a new Mac mini with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server loaded inside. This incarnation of the Mac Mini will not include a DVD drive, but instead houses 2 × 500 Gb hard disks as server storage. The entire line of Mac minis are available from the Apple Store now from S$948.

Macbook

The Macbook also saw a much needed update. It now sports an entirely new unibody polycarbonate enclosure. Like her bigger Pro cousin, the Macbook now comes with a built-in rechargeable battery, which boasts up to seven hours of wireless productivity with each charge. It comes in one flavor, clocking in at 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and only at S$1588 if you add any additional extras.

The new Macbook will be available in Singapore from the Apple Store at the end of October from S$1,588.  Do note that the Macbook, unlike the Macbook Pros and iMacs, does not have a SD card slot.

Other updates

The Magic Mouse is a refresh to the Mighty Mouse. The name change is due to legal reasons, but “magic” is also a much better descriptor. It is the world’s first Multi-Touch mouse which can recognize gestures very similar to the trackpads on their laptop range. This means you can two-fingers swipe to advance through pages on your browser and you can use one finger to scroll and pan through your documents just by touching any part of the surface.

We will be posting an in-depth review of the Magic Mouse very soon. Stay tuned, but if you are interested in a new mouse for your mac, the Magic Mouse should set you back about S$98 and is available end of October.

The Airport Extreme and Time Capsule also saw a minor but significant update. With the approval of the 802.11n standard, the new wireless stations now come standard with dual-band support. Under the hood, the antenna used is improved and now boasts 50% better Wi-Fi performance and up to 25% better range than the previous generation.

Overall, this update is a significant one and in my opinion, there’s never been a better time to get a new Mac. We will be posting a buying guide very soon, so check back here soon for some buying tips this holiday season.

Just had an epiphany – with SingTel having the rights to the English Premier League come June 2010, wouldn’t it be the icing on the cake for iPhone users to be able to watch live matches straight on your iPhone while you are out?

With that in mind, switching to SingTel to get the iPhone now and signing up their EPL sports package, might just sound like an enticing idea.

With a short press release, M1 announced a successful agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to their customers later this year.

M1 and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone to customers in Singapore later this year. M1 looks forward to offering iPhone and a range of tailored service plans to customers in Singapore.

More information on pricing, tariffs and availability dates will be released in due course

With Christmas round the corner, we won’t be surprised to see a spike in queue lines at M1 stores when they offer the phone. It has been more than one year since SingTel brought the iPhone to Singapore, which started a marked increase of customers switching from both Starhub and M1 to SingTel. With this announcement, the loser in the war of the three Telcos in Singapore must be Starhub, which till now, remains iPhone-less and can only offer the other smart phones like those from HTC, LG to name a few.

While the iPhone 3GS been out for a few months, demand for it is still strong, with long queues at Hello Stores when the new stock of iPhones were out on 7 October. Good news indeed for the rest of the M1 customers now that they need not switch to get the iPhone – just in time for Christmas.

Apple has released an update to the iPhone OS 3.1.2 and iPod touch. The changes are bug fixes as stated in iTunes when you plug your phone in:

• Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep
• Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart
• Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming

At around 200MB, you will be prompted to download and update your iPhone and iPod touch when you plug in.

Any problems or improvements – do let us know!

I think Mac fans live and feed on rumours to sustain our insatiable appetite to be the first to know about new product launches, features etc. Many times, such rumours originates from factories in China where most of the products are manufactured – like how we knew about cameras appearing in the recently released iPod nanos because some leaks from certain iPod nano case manufacturer.

Another good source is from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filings that regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable – thus companies that produce products that has such features – like say a BlueTooth mouse and keyboard, they need to be submitted and as such filings are available to the public, they will quickly be spotted by the eager eyes from sites like Engadget and AppleInsiders. These two filings are supposedly for the MightyMouse replacement that again will push the boundaries of mouse-technology.

See more details at AppleInsider

Also running through the Interweb are Google ads that supposedly leaked the release of new iMacs, MacBooks and Mac minis. As these are pretty hazy thin in rumour land, do keep a look out for the upcoming festive period if you are planning to make a purchase soon as both the iMacs and MacBooks are nearing the end of their product cycle.