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I’ve said it before, but it bears saying again: Apple’s trackpads are simply full of awesome. They are the stuff that other PC-makers dream of, and aspire to. Matched by innovative software and cleverly cross-pollinated from bred-in Touch devices like the iPhone, Apple’s trackpads are the gold-standard to be measured against. Now that awesome is not only for laptop owners. Announced yesterday, together with a complete iMac line rev, the Magic Trackpad is here for desktop users as well.

From the Apple website: Magic Trackpad is just like the trackpad on the MacBook Pro, but bigger. It’s made with the same advanced touch-friendly and wear-resistant glass surface. But with nearly 80 percent more area, it’s the largest Multi-Touch trackpad made by Apple. So there’s even more room for you to scroll, swipe, pinch, and rotate to your fingers’ content. And since the entire surface is a button that clicks, you can use it in place of a mouse. Hmmm…And then, snipes like this started to emerge:

It’s happening.
Apple is, in the way that Apple does, changing yet another aspect of how we experience computers and computing. My prediction: A year from now, with the majority of our desktop computer interaction happening through touch gestures, we’ll look back and see this, as the moment when we changed course. The combination of the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad will see to that, I’m certain.

MG Siegler (@parislemon), over at Techcrunch, agrees: “The mouse may be destined to become a precision tool that professions such as designers use. History may prove that this Magic Trackpad was the final mouse trap that signaled this end.”

Indeed.

It’s seems like it’s been forever coming, what with Apple’s obsession with the iPhone and iPad, but yesterday, the empire of the Steve rev’d the iMac lines, properly. Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, discrete ATI Radeon HD graphics, Solid State Drive combo options, and Magic Trackpads, oh my!

Processors. The iMac line has been standardised around Intel’s 32-nanometer process technology. Starting at the i3, models run up to the quad-core i5 and i7 CPU’s in the 27-inch iMac. The processors feature an integrated memory controller to access the system memory directly, allowing the new iMac to take full advantage of its faster 1333 MHz memory.

Graphics. The choices of nVidia or ATI GPU’s seem to have vanished, in their wake? Discrete (meaning the graphics processor is separate from the CPU) ATI Radeon HD processors. The 21-5-inch models get a choice of either the 4670 with 256MB of dedicated memory or the 5670 with 512MB of memory. If you’re getting a 27-incher, you can also choose the 5670 with 512MB of memory, or the 5750 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. That’s a lot of GPU horse-power.

Hard Drives. Drive space is up to the 500GB-2TB range on the smaller iMac, and 1TB-2TB on the larger. Customers buying the 27-inch iMac also have the option to order a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) as a primary or secondary drive. The iMac SSD supports up to 215 MB/s data transfer rates for faster startup and application launch times.

“We took the world’s best all-in-one and made it even better,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With the latest processors, high-performance graphics and signature aluminum and glass design, customers are going to love the latest iMac.”

It’s always interesting to watch the social media giants at play.
And by play, of course, I mean, “continue on their quest for domination of the universe…”

It seems that Facebook has really listened to the complaints of the vocal rebel minority, who actually care enough about their privacy, to be morally outraged by the repeated shenanigans on the Zuckerberg DeathStar. First they (hugely) simplified the privacy controls. Aside: The video clip where Zuckerberg is interviewed by Robert Scoble, and recounts his own “WHAT??” moment on discovering that there are [insert absurdly huge number here] privacy settings, is pure gold. Next, they offered users a (almost) one-click “Deacivate My Account” option (In 14 days…If I don’t touch my account…Maybe.)

And now…There’s evidence of a “Delete My Account” option. Apparently being tested on a subset of Facebook users, the option will greatly simplify (and perhaps shorten) the process of jumping ship. It’s likely that the proviso in the Terms Of Use, that gives FaceBook rights to use uploaded content in perpetuity (and even after account closure), will remain in force. The rumors were confirmed by Facebook:
“…we are constantly testing new ideas, including the placement of various features. One of these recent tests included variations of the delete account option for a very small percentage of people.

And, in other news from the Twitter universe, we see that the Force is strong in this one. The force to become a Facebook clone, that is. Twitter is testing inline media display. So, when people that you follow, post links to photos and videos, those items will load and appear in your stream. That may be great in bandwidth-flush areas, less so in others. Personally, I like to choose to load and view media, even within my following stream.

Twitter’s official response?
“We’re constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android apps.”

My real-life introduction to AMOLED*, on a friend’s shiny new HTC Desire, would not make for reproduction here. Sadly. It was a doozy. The display is just so…bright, and clear and vibrant, and, well, gob-smackingly beautiful, it scores a 12/10 on the first-impressions scale.

Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story. The promises of absurd viewing-angles, and ultra-low power consumption, are not quite all they were made out to be. And, there’s another thorn in AMOLED’s foot(print). Super LCD’s (SLCD). In the never-ending game of leapfrog that is technology, the competition is never far behind, and the latest round of SLCD displays reach right into AMOLED’s lunchbox, and in some cases are cheeky enough to be adding mayo, before tucking into the sarmies.

And now, HTC, it’s hand forced by Samsung’s inability (or unwillingness, depending where you read) to keep up with the outrageous demand for AMOLED screens for HTC’s Desire, Droid Incredible and Nexus One models, has engaged the services of Sony, to supply an alternative, Super TFT LCD display, for these models. Quoting from the press release:

“HTC is experiencing high-demand for many of our phones, specifically our phones with 3.7 inch displays. The new SLCD display technology enables us to ramp up our production capabilities quickly to meet the high-demand. The SLCD displays provide consumers with a comparable visual experience to HTC’s current 3.7 inch displays with some additional benefits including battery performance.” ~ Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation.

* Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode

Mark Zuckerberg, on the Facebook Blog, yesterday morning:
As of this morning, 500 million people all around the world are actively using Facebook to stay connected with their friends and the people around them.
Hmmm, not so sure that’s all accurate and absolutely true. To be clear, I’m 100% sure that there are 500 million accounts on Facebook. But, I’m also very sure that a big percentage of those are not active. Whatever. There’s no denying that it’s a big, big number. And that for all the brouhouhah around privacy concerns and big-brother page disappearances, Facebook remains the pre-eminent social media empire.

This good news, is in contrast with the legal wrangle that Zuckerberg is facing from Paul Ceglia, he of fraud charges to the tune of $200,000 in his wood fuel business. Ceglia claims he contracted Zuck to code a web project, and somehow came out of this exercise with a 50% share of a Zuckerberg project, named “The Face Book”. Contractual provisions have since increased the share to 84%, apparently. Zuckerberg’s reply to these claims?
“Of course not. It was all about his website. I hadn’t even thought of Facebook yet. How could I have given him an ownership interest in it?”
The most telling statement in this sad saga comes from Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt.
“Plaintiff’s counsel approached us and offered to discuss ways to make this go away. We declined.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect”, Zuckerberg did not make any big announcements, instead offering some interesting insights:

• The most engaging thing online is other people. If you’re trying to figure out why your site isn’t performing well, you may want to ask yourself: “How many faces are on my website?”
• People in larger, less restrictive networks are more engaged. The company has seen an increased level of engagement among those networks that are larger and less restrictive.
• Facebook is working on improving friend lists. Zuckerberg admitted that the company had not build Friend Lists effectively
• Don’t expect much to come from interviews. “I’m always most excited about what we’re working on now, but I can’t talk about it.”
• Daily percentage of active users has increased. The daily percentage of active users (which hovers near 50 percent), has actually gone up over the past year