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On Virgin America's inaugural GoGo WiFi flight: this post published from 35,000 feetNovember 22 2008

So I took a little a break from working on gdgt to get on Virgin America's inaugural Aircell GoGo WiFi party flight, posting this at altitude. If you haven't already caught one of the early Aircell flights on Delta, American, or Air Canada, their now-active GoGo service provides in-flight internet. So far, as far as party planes go, this one hasn't been too raucous -- probably because everyone's been geeking out on their laptops.
Quick facts:
  • The service is a shared high-power EV-DO Rev. A connection, at 3.6Mbps downstream and 1.8Mbps upstream.
  • By April, 100% of Virgin America's flights will have GoGo service. Dayumn! All GoGo service is $10 for short flights (under 3 hours) and $13 for longer flights (over 3 hours).
  • So far I've been getting about 1Mbps down, and 200Kbps up -- pretty good considering that this is about as pinned as the system is going to get. There are only about 150 people on it right now, you know?
  • Latency is between 200-500ms, sometimes higher. Reasonable latency, though.
  • The system uses 802.11a/b/g, although it's an open AP (i.e. no encryption).
  • Speaking of which, GoGo claims they'll support VPN, s





Apple MacBook aluminum and glass super-shiny hands-onOctober 14 2008

We just got our grubby, oily hands all over this pristine, all glass and aluminum MacBook. We sullied it on your behalf, but our initial impressions mostly positive: it's small, incredibly, ridiculously solid feeling, and we actually don't hate the all-clicking trackpad much at all. (If your thumb muscle memory makes you click at the bottom where the button used to be, it works and feels pretty much the same.) Of course, the glare of the glass screen is a MAJOR issue for us, and will be pretty much forever. There's just no way we'll be able to love it, so our eyes will be peeled for after-market add-ons to cut that down a bit. But in terms of the rest, it's pretty clear this is the best MacBook -- and best mainstream consumer laptop -- Apple's made to date.

Gallery: Apple MacBook aluminum and glass super-shiny hands-on




Engadget Cares: save us from Apple's groundbreaking, developer-shackling App StoreSeptember 25 2008
Engadget editor-at-large and gdgt co-founder Ryan Block contributes Engadget Cares, a friendly advice column for the people who make your technology.


It's not hard to argue that the App Store's inspired success for the mobile software world, with over 100 million programs downloaded on only a few million phones in just a matter of months. Palm, Nokia, Microsoft must all be simmering (and understandably so). But Apple, if you're having trouble getting buy-in from passionate developers with a serious creative vision for iPhone apps beyond the dozens of me-too calculators and to-do lists -- and you know you are -- the writing's on the wall, and you're the one who put it there.

But it's not just about the draconian SDK agreement (which we'll get to in a minute), or the uncertainty that runs through every developer -- large and small -- as they wonder whether you'll give the all-important thumbs-up to the app they've just invested all that blood / sweat / tears / money into (we'll get to that, too). What seems to the rest of us like nefarious intent may simply be Apple coming to grips with its own succe




iPod touch 2G - first hands-onSeptember 9 2008

We just got some hands-on time with the new iPod touch, and we're really feeling this one. Jury's still out on the new nano, but the second-gen touch is a marked improvement over the first gen model. The WiFi antenna looks much better integrated, the speaker doesn't sound like complete trash despite not even having any speaker holes, and the thing is crazy thin. Like, really, really thin.

Gallery: iPod touch 2G - first hands-on




Apple event for next Tuesday, the 9thSeptember 2 2008

Looks like that Apple event for the Tuesday, the 9th of this month is on. We know it'll be new iPods (they always do iPods for the fall / holidays), but hopefully they'll have a little something special for us. Whatever, just as long as it's not that round, awful looking nano. Go on, hit the comments and get speculating.

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Apple event for next Tuesday, the 9th originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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