Although we were expecting the announcement of the iPhone 4 during Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC 2010 on Monday, we were still blown away by Apple’s latest addition to the iPhone family.

The new iPhone 4 has several amazing new features:

• Video calling.  Apple calls it “FaceTime” and it works iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi. The iPhone 4 has 2 cameras — one on the front that focuses on you, and one on the back that focuses on everything else.
• HD Video Recording and Editing. You no longer need to carry your Flip HD and a phone.  With the iMovie app, you can edit your footage and make movies on your iPhone 4.
• 5-Megapixel Camera with LED Flash. The camera on the back of the iPhone 4 is 5-megapixel, and there’s also a built-in LED flash that automatically fires when needed. The VGA-quality front facing camera is great for self-portraits.
• Multitasking. You can run third-party apps and switch back and forth between them without running down your battery or slowing the performance of the apps.

There are loads more features to the iPhone 4, including the beautiful 960-by-640 resolution Retina display, which looks incredibly sharp and vibrant. You can check out all the new tech specs for the iPhone 4 here.

Current iPhone owners can check out the status of your iPhone 4 upgrade eligibility by dialing *639# on your iPhone. AT&T will text you back to let you know if you are eligible for the full upgrade price ($199 for the 16GB and $299 for the 32GB) or on what date you’ll be eligible in the future.

For those of you who are ready to buy an iPhone for the first time, you can reserve your iPhone 4 starting June 15. More details here.

Our tech James was going to wait for the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G, but he just happened to walk past the Apple Store the day the iPad Wi-Fi debuted…

James bought the 16GB Wi-Fi iPad, which he says is indeed an amazing device, and is easily as much of a paradigm shift as the original iPhone was, if not more.

James is able to functionally leave his laptop at home 90% of the time, and the iPad is small and light enough that he can always have it with him. The iBooks app allows him to get some reading done when he takes to the subway.  James has re-ordered the 3G iPad, which will be much much much more functional for him as he’s constantly out and about.  We’ll give a report on that later this month.

James’ only minor complaint is that some of the apps available for iPhone aren’t quite up to speed for iPad yet:

• Office2 app interfaces with Google Docs pretty well, and Pages and Numbers are pretty sweet.
• Server Admin Remote has been updated for the iPad, but still waiting for iStat to follow suit.
• A couple of different VNC clients are already out — waiting to see who rises to the top.

James says he’s hoping for a Firefox and an Apple Airport Utility for the iPad as well.

You can check out an iPad at your local Apple Store or take the guided tour online here.

A word of caution from James when using your iPad in public — you may not be able to use it without being stared at or talked to.  Yes, it’s that stupendous.

Time Capsule Failures: When They Happen and What to Do http://bit.ly/957RSb (via @TidBITS)

The Apple “tablet” that has been the subject of much speculation over the past year made its debut last week.

Advertised as “the best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video,” the iPad features a 9.7 inch Multi-Touch display, and is only 0.5 inch thin.  With a weigh of only 1.5 pounds, the iPad is incredibly portable.

As of last week, the iPad can run almost 140,000 of the apps on the App Store — even the ones that you’ve already downloaded on your iPhone and iPod touch.  A new app to the iPad is iBooks, which allows users to read and buy books from the built-in iBookstore.

The iPad is reasonably priced, with models starting at $499 for the 16GB + Wi-Fi and topping out at $829 for the 64GB + Wi-Fi + 3G.  The Wi-Fi only models ship in March, with the 3G models following in April.

Engadget published a good hands-on evaluation of the iPad, with the pluses (beautiful screen, super fast CPU, great eBook reading experience) and the minuses (no multi-tasking, no camera and no Adobe Flash).  For all the technical specs and the promo video, visit Apple’s website.

Over the past few years, we have deployed the Mac mini as a server for several of our small business clients, all of whom have been happy with its performance.  Since Apple released the new Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server back in October, some of our clients have been considering upgrading.

Our tech Gene sent me this very thorough review of the Mac mini Server that was published by MacInTouch last week.  The review runs through the history of the Mac mini and OS X Server and gives a very good overview of the features.

We’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about the Apple Media Tablet / Mega iPod Touch.  As our tech James points out, if Apple extends the iPhone OS to it, the existing Kindle app will work, which will give you a lush glass screen, RGB display, no wasted space and 65,000 other applications at the same time.  It would probably mean the end of Amazon’s Kindle but would still carry on with the very smart Amazon Kindle format for content.

Just a friendly reminder to all of our clients, readers and friends with iPhones that the iPhone 3.0 Software Update is available tomorrow, June 17, 2009.

There have been a few helpful instructional videos posted by developers over the past few days.  I’m including one here that is fairly lengthy, but includes overviews of the following new features:

• Internet Tethering (not currently available in the U.S.)
• MMS Messaging (not available with AT&T until later in the summer)
• Landscape Keyboard
• Cut/Copy/Paste
• Voice Memos
• Universal Search – Spotlight
• MobileMe Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe

Lots of exciting news announced at the 2009 WWDC today!  Some of the biggest highlights from the conference:

iPhone News

• New iPhone 3GS will be available on June 19th.  Only major improvements seem to be better battery life and faster processor.  Our techs were wishing for 802.11n on the new iPhone, but alas, no.
• A more affordable iPhone!  The current 8GB iPhone 3G is now $99!
• iPhone OS 3.0 will be available free to all iPhone users on June 17th.  Has several new features and improvements on existing features.
• Incredibly useful service “Find My iPhone” will be available to MobileMe customers.  Users can login to MobileMe from any browser and locate their iPhone on a Google Map.  Great theft deterrent!
• Lost or stolen iPhones can be wiped clean of all data with a remote command.  If the iPhone is found, the data can be restored from a backup.

Apple Notebook News

• MacBook Air is reduced in price and given faster processors.  The new 1.86GHz is now $1,499 and the new 2.13GHz is $1,799.
• The 13″ aluminum MacBook is now part of the MacBook Pro line.  It now has a FireWire 800 port AND an SD card slot.  The new 15″ MacBook Pro also has the SD card slot, but the 17″ MacBook Pro is keeping the ExpressCard/34 slot.
• Prices on the entry level MacBook Pro models have been reduced by $300!

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard News

• Among the improvements and additions, Snow Leopard will have faster Time Machine backups, better iChat and Microsoft Exchange server support.
• Snow Leopard will launch at some point in September and will be reasonably priced at $29 for current OS X 10.5 Leopard users.  The regular price for Snow Leopard will be $129.
• Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard is also scheduled for release in September and will be $499 for an unlimited license.  It appears there will be no 10 user license option anymore.

Safari News

• Safari 4 is no longer in beta!  Download the fastest browser from Apple’s site today!

For additional information or if you want to view Apple’s WWDC 2009 Keynote Address, click here.

We recently recommended a 2.0TB miniStack drive to one of our clients (a small office with five users) to use as a Time Machine backup destination.  This size drive is perfect for this client, but for our clients who need more storage and high speed performance, we are looking to the DroboPro.

With 8 SATA bays, the DroboPro supports up to 16TB currently (12.48TB of usable storage single disk redundancy or 10.89TB dual disk redundancy).  This is much less expensive than similar options on the market right now and it has so much higher capacity!

We’ve run into a couple of instances recently where clients didn’t realize they were using external hard drives that had been formatted for Windows.  The drives they purchased were formatted MS-DOS by default and Disk Utility didn’t pop up.  Thinking all was well, they began copying data to the drives.  The process was slow, laborious, glitchy and they didn’t understand why.

It’s not difficult at all to format a drive for use with your Apple computer.  If you attach an unformatted drive, your Mac will prompt you to open Disk Utility.  If you have a drive that is already formatted (MS-DOS, as in the case above), however, you may not be alerted to open Disk Utility.

Now, if you’re going to be using this drive to move data between Mac and PC computers, then you’ll want the drive formatted for MS-DOS.  It is not advisable to use an MS-DOS formatted drive to store data for your Macintosh computer, as you won’t be able to use the drive to start up your Mac.

If you’re only using the external drive for your Macintosh computer, however, then the ideal is to format the drive for Mac OS X.

**If you have any data on the drive, be sure to copy it to your machine or another device before following the steps below.  Formatting your external drive will erase any data contained on that drive.

1.  Connect the external hard drive that you want to format to your Mac and then go to Finder/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility

2.  In Disk Utility, you will see on the left a list of hard drives.  Select the drive that you want to format.  The size, brand and model number will typically be listed as the name of the drive.  If a drive has any volumes, they will be indented and listed directly below the name of the drive.  Be sure to select the drive and not the volume in order to reformat the entire drive.

3.  In the right hand section of the window, you will see five tabs — First Aid, Erase, Partition, RAID and Restore.  Click the Partition tab.

• Alternatively, if you are not going to create partitions, you can just use the Erase function.  This will format the entire drive as well.

4.  Select the Volume Scheme menu on the left and choose the number of partitions you would like to make on your drive.  You have to select at least one partition.

5.  After choosing the number of partitions you want, click the Options button at the bottom of the partition diagram (located under the Volume Scheme pop up menu), which will allow you to select the appropriate partition scheme.

• Select GUID Partition Table if you want to use the hard drive to start up an Intel-based Mac, or use the drive as a non-startup drive with a machine using OS X version 10.4 or later.

• Select Apple Partition Map if you want to use the hard drive to start up a PowerPC-based Mac, or use the drive as a non-startup drive with any Mac.

6.  Choose a name and volume format for each partition under Volume Information in the right side of the window.

• Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), the default volume format for Mac OS X.

7.  Click the Apply button after you have reviewed your selections.  Another dialog box will appear, confirming that you want to partition your drive.  Select the Partition button and you are finished!

**Big thanks to our brilliant tech Gene for suggesting this post.