Thankfully Will is a resilient sort and is already planning the replacement of his studios kit, but this story may have had a different ending if Will had installed the excellent utility Undercover from Orbicule. Undercover is a small application that you can install on Apple computers ( iMac, MacBook ) as well as the iPad and iPhone ( though I am not covering iOS versions in this article ). Once installed Undercover does, well actually, once installed it does precisely nothing ! The installer hides an application deep inside your Mac and leaves no obvious trace of itself to indicate that it is there. The application then lies dormant until the fateful day that your precious Mac is either lost or stolen, at which point you go to http://www.undercovercenter.com and login with the credentials you created when you installed the application. Here you can mark the Mac as lost or stolen and additionally can add crime reference details and email addresses of the police which is used to update the police directly on the status of your stolen machine.

What happens then depends on what has become of your Mac. In all likelihood the thief will either attempt to use it themselves before passing on or selling it. This is where you can help the Undercover application by enabling a default user account on your Mac with no password when you install it, as you want the thief to be able to login and start using the computer. Once they have logged in they will most likely attempt to connect to the Internet and as soon as they do this the Undercover application will be triggered and will start tracking the use of the computer in a number of ways. It will attempt to locate itself using the Skyhook wireless location service, this location information will then be reported back to www.undercovercenter.com and you will receive an email telling you that your Mac has been found ! In addition it will record the IP address of the device and fire off regular screen grabs of information on the screen and return those to your undercovercenter.com account. Finally Undercover will take regular snaps using your Macs built in webcam and send these up to your web account as well. Together this set of data provides the police with a very strong set of evidence for locating and apprehending the thief before they have chance to sell it on, in fact there are a whole host of stories on Orbicule’s web site of users who have retrieved their Macs after installing Undercover.

In addition to the steps Undercover takes as standard there is an option on the web site to trigger what they refer to as “Plan B”. In this mode the Mac will be configured to simulate a screen failure with the aim of fooling the thief into taking the Mac to a repair centre or Apple Store. A further mode can be setup to display a full screen message and to setup the text to speech engine to shout a user defined phrase at the devices highest volume level. These steps will hopefully ensure that if the thief does try to sell on the Mac it soon becomes apparent to whoever picks it up that this was stolen.

If you wish to test the recovery steps so you are clear how it works and what to do if you are in the position of needing to use for real, you can go through the process of marking as stolen and see for yourself exactly what the information retrieved looks like. Once you are happy simply mark it as recovered again and you will receive an email confirming that it has been recovered as well as a link which will delete the test data from your account.

All in all this is an essential purchase and is easily justifiable, especially if in the worst case it helps you to recover your lost Mac !

Undercover has a number of licence variations from a single user at $49, a household version for up to 5 Macs at $59, a site licence for up to 25 Macs at $249 and student and enterprise volume licences. Notably Orbicule also offer a money back guarantee should you not be able to recover your stolen Mac.

Unfortunately due to the fact that the application installs itself as a root process Orbicule are not able to sell through the Apple App Store so you will need to go to http://www.orbicule.com to download and purchase. For users who change their computers often there are full instructions on removing and transferring the software between machines so you won’t need to buy again when upgrading.

MacRumours has this update which also highlights some possible configurations.

Anyway, I eventually settled on a small messenger bag from Targus called, not entirely originally, the Targus A7 12″ Netbook Messenger which seemed to fit the bill and at a hair over £20 on Amazon wouldn’t break the bank if it turned out to be less than ideal.

The bag is not the most stylish in the world but then it isn’t terribly nasty either. It is typical black nylon laptop style but nicely made and looks reasonably sturdy. When empty the case is very light which inevitably means there isn’t a huge amount of padding but this is a trade off you have to make with an ultra light laptop, “should I go for a lightweight case which offers minimal protection or a heavier bag which negates the benefits of a lightweight laptop”. Clearly I will not be bouncing my precious MacBook around in this case ( though I wouldn’t if it was much sturdier either ! ) but it seems as though it provides a good balance between weight against protection.

There are two main compartments, a slimmer padded one for your MacBook ( or netbook ) and a slightly wider one which is ideal for carrying accessories, cables or even a notebook/folder etc. On the outside of the case there are a further three smaller pockets, a larger zipped pocket and two open pockets which are covered by the flap when the bag is closed. The closure is velcro with external plastic clips. The whole thing is rounded off with an adjustable, though unpadded, shoulder strap.

The 11″ MacBook only just fits into the padded compartment so I am not entirely sure that the case is suitable for a 12″ netbook as its name suggests ( though I don’t have one to hand to prove this theory ), but for my purposes the fit is very good. Overall I am happy with the bag and from what I can see it is pretty much the only laptop bag of this size/shape that is readily available in the UK, so if you have an 11″ Air and want a decent bag to carry it around in I would recommend it.

[Show as slideshow]

Having plopped down quite a chunk of cash for Apples latest mini laptop, I am currently struggling to find a suitable made to measure case/bag for it. It seems as though there is something of a gap in the market between the cases designed for 10″ netbooks and those for 13″ laptops such as the standard MacBooks. Any that seem to be designed to fit the 11″ model appear to be from US based suppliers such as Tom Bihn and prohibitively expensive.

Searching Amazon.co.uk doesn’t seem to help much either, most of the 11″ specific cases here are simple neoprene sleeves, which is fine if you just want something to protect your MacBook from skidding about inside a standard 13″ laptop bag….

Has anyone out there in the UK who has bought an 11″ Air have any ideas or suggestions ? If so please leave a comment…

UPDATE : Click here or my review of the Targus Messenger bag that I bought for my MacBook Air.

Of most interest to the majority of people will be the Magic Mouse and the astounding new 27″ LED iMac. The Magic Mouse extends Apples multi-touch technology to the mouse, disposing of the roller ball for scrolling in favour of a mouse surface that is a multi-touch trackpad able to respond to most of the gestures possible on the MacBooks trackpad. Mac haters will no doubt love the fact that the device still sports no obvious buttons and will no doubt gloat over the apparent inability of the mouse to allow right mouse clicks, everyone else will quietly configure it to work exactly how they wish and revel in the usual Apple design beauty. Of course even amongst Mac fans the mouse has traditionally been something you either love or hate but personally I think this latest revision looks stunning and sets off the look of the iMac to perfection.

The new iMacs take the Apple desktop range to new heights and push the Power Mac further into a niche corner by delivering superb 21.5″ and a huge 27″ LED backlit screens, Core 2 Duo and Quad processors including the option of Intel i7 and the option to install a huge 16Gb of RAM. Apart from the internal specs the design of the iMac is largely unchanged from previous models apart from minor tweaks including a slight thinning of the aluminium stand, though you could clearly argue that the current design is still very much of the moment and therefore Apple have rightly not felt it necessary to mess with it.

The Mac Mini has received a performance hike with two new models sporting beefier processors and expanded memory and at the same time a DVD-less model complete with Snow Leopard Server has been launched, clearly an attempt to tempt smaller companies away from Windows server solutions. Finally a slightly slimmer and lighter white Macbook now receives a unibody casing ( ala MacBook Pro line ), LED backlight, a glass multi-touch trackpad and a 7 hour battery life wrapping off an impressive list of upgrades.

There is no doubt that the timing of these updates was planned to detract some media attention away from this weeks launch of Windows 7, though even the most fervent Mac supporter will have to admit that this week will inevitably be remembered for Microsoft’s new product launch ( though time will tell which is ultimately the most successful ! )

In reality the day is probably fast approaching when cables will become a relic of the early days of electronics, wireless power has been the goal of many teams of physicists and engineers around the world for years, and has been demonstrated in actual products on a limited scale on an increasingly regular basis over the last couple of years. It goes without saying I think that Apple will be watching developments in this area with keen interest, that is if they are not engaged in developments of their own.

Couple wireless power with Ultra Wide Band radio ( UWB ) for transmitting video signals and the next generation of Cinema displays will finally be able to lose the tethering cables and Apples marketing teams will be able to honestly show pictures how they would probably like to show them already, sans-cables !

Still, this event has long been expected to revolve around new notebook announcements and this is one Apple blog that is actually hoping for return to previous “And One More Thing” style launches, having been more than a little deflated after the last couple of Steve Notes.

Clearly a product to wow the Apple faithful is well overdue as is a refresh of the aging Macbook lineup ( Macbook Air excepted of course ).

Personally I would like to see Apple attacking the growing Netbook market with a really price competitive sub-notebook, but I think this is probably not going to happen. More likely I think is a consolidation of the Macbook range with uniform aluminium casing across the consumer and Pro models, and presumably a lift in performance and specs at the same time.

Less likely potentials include the oft discussed tablet laptop, though with the advances in touch screens that the iPhone has brought in this always remains a distant possibility, and my personal hope for MUCH improved sound output which on the Macbook is weedy to the point of being ridiculous.

Looking forward to next week…. Cheers

The SSD version boots 18 seconds faster than the traditional hard disc version and loads applications substantially quicker as well. Obviously this speed comes at a price, and in the case of the Air that is a hefty $999 premium. Solid State storage costs are beginning to drop however and capacities are steadily increasing so this model is clearly a pointer at the future of laptops.