Always a popular choice the next version of the MacBook Pro is ready to charge.

The battery follows suit from the 17inch MacBook Pro by including a non-removable battery. Not been able to swap out the battery will no doubt irk some road warriors but Apple is betting the saved space and the adaptive charging implemented will be enough to keep the peace. They are confident the battery will last 5 years before starting to lose capacity.

How long will it last you is the big question using the standard Nvidia 9400M you are looking at around 7 hours with about an hour less for the Nvidia 9600M GT.

To extend your short term battery life remember to dim your screen if possible and turn off Airport.

To extend the long term battery life make sure your battery is used regularly (having your MacBook always plugged in is not good for it’s battery).

Is the fact that you can’t swap out the battery going to sway anyone towards another model?

A look at a few of the reasons why its just so easy to just open your new Mac and start using it instead of fighting with your hardware and software to do what you want.

Macs look cool

Before you even turn your new Mac on you are going to notice this one, it looks great. Design is great, buttons are great, ports are great. Even the cords and other accessories are well designed.

Not as many viruses

With very few viruses that target Macs out in the wild, most users do not ever install anti virus programs. If you were on Windows you would be crazy to go online without a firewall and anti virus. Navigating your way through anti virus trial offers and what is the best anti virus forum threads isn’t exactly fun.

OSX and dock is where its at

Your OSX toolbar is going to be a welcome change to your cluttered Windows desktop, its all there right from the first time you turn it on. Windows 7 does give the OSX dock a run for its money though.

No need to install 50 million drivers

Your sound and wireless will just work. There won’t be a need to scour the internet for the correct drivers you will just be able to get online with the network of your choice at a few clicks.

Unobtrusive updates

Windows is renowned for prompting multiple update downloads the first time it is switched, most of them are for security purposes. Macs download updates automatically letting you get on with what you want to do with your Mac.

iLife

Standard on every Mac iLife lets its users play around with photos, music and video straight away.

Sweet Apps

Software support used to be a problem for Macs but the fact that you can now boot windows so easily this is no longer an issue. There are plenty of Mac exclusive apps you will be glad you can use as well.

It talks nice to your iPhone and iPod

Your iPhone and iPod will feel right at home on your Mac. Programs like Liveview utilise both Mac and iPhone, once again no crazy drivers to hunt down before it works.

Apple retail store

If you need help learning how to use your new Mac you can attend a workshop at an Apple Store, did we mention there is no charge. Or if you have a quick question you can just ask one of the staff. If you buy your Mac at an Apple store someone will even help you move all your old files over to your new Mac, handy!

If something goes wrong

Not that it often does but if something goes wrong you can take your Mac into a retail store where everyone will know exactly what your talking about. Customer support is excellent and anyone that works on your Mac will have worked on the exact same configuration before.

Check out these cool and artistic Snow Leopard Wallpapers. They ship standard with OSX 10.6 but you can download them all from a link over at Creative Bits.

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I recently had to burn a 704MB .avi (divX) file to a 700MB CD through my MacBook. I was pleased to find that although the default OSX Mac burner won’t overburn you can easily do this through a few terminal commands to bypass the overburn block.

1. Firstly create a directory with a short name (will be easier to type into terminal) that only contains the file you wish to burn, remove .nfo files (if a torrent file) or previews/covers leaving just the main .avi file. I called mine “movie”.

2. Open terminal (click finder and type it in if you haven’t used it before).

3. Browse to the directory above movies, enter “cd /user/downloads” where the directory containing the files you are burning is /user/downloads/movie (cd simply stands for change directory). Terminal will then display that you are in that directory. If you get stuck here because you haven’t used terminal before comment below and I will help you out.

4. Create an iso of the movies folder, in terminal enter “hdiutil makehybrid -o isofilename movie/” and your .iso will be created from the files in the folder movie. The progress will be displayed in terminal (doesn’t take long).

5. Enter your cd or DVD into the drive and burn using “hdiutil burn isofilename.iso” (while still in the same directory, which you will be if you follow the steps above). You will not be given the option of what speed to burn the disc at (in most cases this fastest setting is fine),  status will again be displayed in terminal while burning and verifying the disc.

6. Once burned you can delete isofilename.iso if you don’t plan on making any more copies.

Windows 7 and Mac

When your in a hurry and just need to share some files quickly between your Windows 7 PC and Mac there is not better way than this 3 step process.

Step 1:On your Mac. Go to Finder, Click “Go” and select “Connect to Server”.

Step 2: On your Apple Mac, under server address type in “smb://” followed by your IP address for your Windows 7 PC, example smb://192.6.1.100

Step 3: You will be prompted to enter your Windows 7 username and password, do so and you will be connected and asked which drive you would like to mount.

Troubleshooting: If you can’t see any files or folders ensure that they are visible on your Windows 7 PC under “Network” and your computer name in explorer. To share a folder in Windows 7 just right click it and select “share with”.

There is no need to restart your Mac for sharing to begin.

Dropbox now has 8GB 10GB for free with a few referrals! When did that happen!

Use this link to get +250MB when you signup

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Have you ever tried searching for that certain game to play on your Mac OS X? Well, worry no more because here’s 10 of the best FREE games available on any console including Mac OS X. The list is based from PC Fastlane. These games are available for download. Just click the titles.

10th – Battle For Westnoth

Build up a great army, gradually turning raw recruits into hardened veterans. In later games, recall your toughest warriors and form a deadly host against whom none can stand! Choose units from a large pool of specialists, and hand-pick a force with the right strengths to fight well on different terrains against all manner of opposition.

9th – Scorched 3D

Learning how to play is easy, just point the turret, adjust power and trajectory, select a weapon – and shoot! Manage your inventory of weapons with the prize money you can win during each round of combat. Learn the basic controls using the tutorial mode, or set up your own game by customizing dozens of economy and environmental conditions to your liking, or simply play online immediately at one of the various public servers.

8th – Chopper

Chopper is an action-packed, side-scrolling helicopter game. Complete your mission, and return to base, while avoiding enemy fire from tanks, bazooka-wielding mad men, and jets.

7th – Sauerbraten (Cube 2)

Free single and multi player 1st person shooter game with some satisfying fast old school game play. A large variety of game play modes from classic SP to fast 1 on 1 MP and objective based team play, with a great variety of original maps to play on.

6th – Freedoom

This game is an open source version of Doom. Enjoy a jam-packed action of zombie-killing madness.

5th – Neverball

Tilt the floor to roll a ball through an obstacle course before time runs out. Neverball is part puzzle game, part action game, and entirely a test of skill.

4th – Quinn

Quinn is an arcade-style tetromino puzzle game written and designed specifically for Mac OS X.  It features a clean, elegant user interface, beautiful graphics, and smooth, subtle animations for fluid gameplay.  Instead of reinventing the game with yet another variation of the rules, the goal of Quinn is to combine the simplicity of the original idea with the genuine Mac experience for perfect user enjoyment.

3rd – Glest

Glest is a free 3D real-time strategy game, where you control the armies of two different factions: Tech, which is mainly composed of warriors and mechanical devices, and Magic, that prefers mages and summoned creatures in the battlefield.

2nd – FreeCiv

Freeciv is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization. The game commences in prehistory and your mission is to lead your tribe from the stone age to the space age.

1st – PlaneShift

PlaneShift is a Role Playing Game immersed into a 3D virtual fantasy world which is FULLY FREE to play. Fully free means you will have no surprises of premium content which will limit your game play or unbalance the game. There are no limitations in skills, ranks, abilities, items you can gain with your free account.

Enjoy!

You can upgrade for just $29.00.

All the new features can be found here.

The major new feature is the ability to sync with a Microsoft Exchange server.

Apple is selling it as a refined version with lots of little improvements to things like startup times, finder and file sharing.

Check out the link for the full list of refinements.

This is just a test post for the new CDN we are enabling here at Apple Scene. In short what this means for the readers is the blog will load much faster, especially static files like images. :>.

Update: Check out how much faster we just got at Pingdom.

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