The MacBook Air Project: Modder Puts Mac Under Apple Keyboard

This is the reason why I love the modding community: they have no limits. Whether it’s about hardware or jailbreak / graphical modifications, modders always push themselves beyond the limitations and come up with exceptionals, custom creations.

Bart Reardon of The MacBook Air Project decided to try to fit a MacBook Air right under an Apple keyboard and make everything a single piece. Yes, a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM and 80GB hard drive computer inside a standard keyboard. He later thought of putting a Magic Trackpad next to the keyboard, too. He thinks that the device “will be used much beyond internet/email….maybe as an AppleTV replacement.”

Seriously, it’s awesome.

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Adobe to Apple: “Our doors are open”

Finally, we’re back to talking about Adobe and Apple. Frankly, I was getting bored of writing about the antenna. Now, Shantanu Narayen (Adobe chief) is back in the game, and this time he’s saying that Adobe still wants Apple. They can still work together, if Steve Jobs wants to.

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Apple’s iAd Not Off to a Happy Start After All?

After stellar remarks and compliments from Nissan and Unilever, you’d think iAd was a complete success in winning over the hearts of Apple’s partners right? All Things Digital is reporting that Apple’s restrictive iAds policies are having a dramatic effect on progress in the mobile ad space. Disney, J.C. Penny, and Citigroup Inc. just recently got their ads into the mobile space after the month of July was dominated by Nissan and Unilever PLC, while companies like Channel SA ended up dropping their iAds compaign announced at Apple’s launch event.

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Nebulous Notes for iPad

When I saw Nebulous Notes for the iPad in the App Store, I raised an eyebrow at the reviews. An otherwise solid looking notepad was getting shit ratings because the developer started things off on a good note with an honest, self review. Yes, he gave himself five stars. But I don’t know why people get bent out of shape when the developer openly admitted he’s reviewing himself when there’s shady companies that do this hundreds of times over to game the system. One five star review isn’t going to greatly affect an app ranking in the large scale of things, so kudos to the developer for his strong beliefs in an application he’s put a lot of work into. I think there was good intentions here, even if commenters on the App Store have taken it the wrong way.

So I downloaded the application, and I found Nebulous Notes to be okay as an ideal Dropbox application for taking notes. All the icons are pretty, Dropbox syncing is seamless, and I can lock my contents to keep my work private from users I share the iPad with. With a few improvements, this could be my go-to notes application.

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Times for iPad Winners Announced

Thanks everyone who entered the Times for iPad giveaway. We also want to thank the Acrylic Software developers for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.

Here are the winners:

Daniel

Justin Heintz

Canfora

Francesco

Rajkumar

You’ll receive the promo codes in your inbox in a few minutes. Congratulations!

Survey Favors iPad as a Go-To Device

One of the reasons I read on the iPad so much is because of tools like Instapaper, Reeder, and Times. I think of my Dad every time I use Instapaper, as I imagine the plentiful snippets of articles I send him are immediately dropped into a “do later” folder that never gets checked. His ability to readily read content would be dramatically increased via Instapaper’s web app on his aging Dell, especially if I created a script for it. I haven’t heard from him lately, but I imagine he’s still perusing through Yahoo or MSN news rather than reading the few All Things Digital or Ars Technica gigs I send him.

I used to visit sites every day, but by achieving a workflow with so many wonderful tools that all do different things, I’m able to delegate content for later reading, tackle it now, or share good articles with my friends. You can bookmark and highlight text in a paperback book or a newspaper in real life, but the digital savviness acquired by the iPad (and even the Kindle) have made digital content less disposable than physical paper. Mind blown right? Obviously it should be the other way around. While we’ll elaborate on this some more another time, a recent survey in the United Kingdom has me hoping that people live along the same lines of thinking I do. Digital content is more convenient, accessible, and engaging than paper equivalents.

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Win A Copy of TaskAware for iPhone

TaskAware is an iPhone application we reviewed a while ago here which lets you tie your tasks to a specific location and organize them. It’s a got a good-looking UI and, most of all, looks great on the iPhone 4 Retina Display.

We have 3 US promo codes up for grabs. Just leave a comment below, and that’s it! Winners will be announced on Sunday - good luck!