Sony announces first non-Mac ‘Thunderbolt’ laptop coming to Europe in July

Sony on Tuesday took the wraps off a redesigned VAIO Z laptop, which is scheduled to arrive in Europe at the end of July and will feature a proprietary version of Intel’s Thunderbolt technology. Meanwhile, Apple has issued a firmware update to improve Thunderbolt performance.VAIO ZThe new 13.1-inch VAIO Z will take on Apple’s MacBook Air in the ultraportable category, weighing just 2.6 pounds with a thickness of 0.86 inches. In order to reduce the size of the notebook, Sony moved the optical drive and dedicated graphics to an external box, dubbed the Power Media Dock.Though the dock uses a proprietary version of Intel’s codenamed “Light Peak”...

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Review roundup: HP TouchPad billed as ‘mediocre tablet’

The TouchPad, which arrives Friday, features a 9.7-inch touchscreen with a 1,024 x 768 pixel display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core 1.2GHz processor. The device is Wi-Fi only for now with 16GB and 32GB models that sell for $499 and $599 respectively.A 3G version of the device is scheduled to arrive on ATT later this summer. HP announced the Touchpad in February as the beginning of a “new era” of WebOS.HP’s WebOS has been much-anticipated for its potential to break up Apple’s lock on the tablet market. The world’s largest PC maker acquired the mobile operating system when it bought Palm last year for $1.2 billion, promising to “double down”...

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Inside iOS 5: New lock screen notifications, receding iMessage keyboard

The second beta of Apple’s iOS 5.0 mobile operating system began making its way to developers on Friday, revealing cosmetic changes to certain lock-screen notifications, a slide away keyboard in iMessage, and other tweaks.New Lock-Screen Alert StyleAs previously discussed, users of iOS 5.0 this fall will be able to select between two distinct styles of notifications: traditional “Alert” notifications that overlay the screen (as they do in iOS 4.0) and require the user to dismiss them, and new “Banner” notifications that appear subtly at the top of the screen for a few seconds before rolling out of view and into the Notifications pull-down without...

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Best Buy suspends MacBook Air orders ahead of refresh

Retailer Best Buy has put a hold on online MacBook Air orders, providing further evidence that Apple plans to release an updated version of its diminutive laptop. Best Buy’s listings (via MacNN) for the current-generation MacBook Air are now listed as “Not Available for Shipping.” Meanwhile, all MacBook Air models on Apple’s Online Store remain ready for shipping.Best Buy continues to offer the portables in its brick-and-mortar retail stores, though some locations have reportedly run out of stock. In the U.K., the big-box retailer allows orders for a MacBook Air with 128GB of storage, but only with in-store pickup at certain locations.Apple...

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Sprint CEO planning ‘nukes’ to block AT&T, T-Mobile merger

Hesse offered Bloomberg’s Greg Bensinger a rare glimpse into the “White Room” where he plans his offensive against ATT, using the room’s nearly wall-to-wall whiteboards to “map out “nukes” in red, blue and green ink.”In addition to Sprint’s resources, the CEO has invested his own personal resources in stopping ATT. His strategy has included lobbying Congress, courting technology CEOs to speak out against the deal and convincing state regulators to examine the acquisition. And, according to the interview, Hesse has “other tactics” up his sleeve.ATT announced in March that it had reached an agreement to purchase T-Mobile USA from parent company Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion. The deal has quickly come under federal scrutiny, with the U.S. Senate, Department of Justice and Federal Communications...

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Google confirms FTC conducting review of its business

Google has confirmed that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is opening an investigation into the company’s business practices.In an official blog post on Friday entitled “Supporting choice, ensuring economic opportunity,” the company said it had received notification from the FTC regarding the initiation of a review of its business.“We respect the FTCs process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services,” the post read.Google said the exact nature of the commission’s concerns remained unclear, while continuing to vouch for the reliability and integrity of its search results. The post highlighted the company’s guiding principles for search, which include:Do whats best for the user.Provide the most relevant...

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Teardown of Apple’s new Time Capsule reveals consumer, not server, grade HDD

According to one teardown of Apple’s Time Capsule released earlier this week, the hard disk drive inside the wireless base station is a consumer version, not a server-grade disk as advertised by Apple.French Mac site MacBidouille tore down Apple’s fourth-generation Time Capsule. The 2TB Time Capsule received by the publication featured a Western Digital Caviar Green HDD. Various publications have noted that the WD Caviar Green model is generally considered consumer class. However, on its website, Apple advertises the Time Capsule as having a “Serial ATA server-grade hard disk drive.”According to MacNN, a comparable server-grade model...

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Facebook’s Zuckerberg modeled early management style after Steve Jobs

According to one of Facebook’s early employees, founder Mark Zuckerberg admired Apple CEO Steve Jobs and modeled his early management style after Jobs’ “aggressive” style.Former Facebook designer Bryan Veloso described Zuckerberg’s respect for Jobs while explaining the origin of his notorious “I’m CEO, bitch” business cards. “It’s no secret that [Zuckerberg] looked up to Steve Jobs at the time,” Veloso wrote of the early days of Facebook.“When Aaron Sittig and I were the only designers in late 2005, he would hold his design meetings with us in that classic “aggressive” Steve Jobs-style,” he continued. “It was during one of those meetings where...

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