MacBook Air: 11-inch, 13-inch comes to India

Apple's new MacBook Air, launched in the U.S. at Apple's Back to the Mac event last month, has finally started appearing in retail stores and Apple resellers across India. This includes both the MacBook Air models: the improved 13-inch model and the all new 11-inch MacBook Air ultraportable.

Apart from being thin and light (especially the 11-inch model), the new MacBook Air ultraportables don't feature a spinning drive or an SSD slotted inside. Instead, both the new MacBook Air models sport on-board (soldered onto the motherboard) Flash storage: spanning from 64GB all the way up to 256GB. Both the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models sport Intel Core 2 Duo processors and Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics.
MacBook Air: Price, Availability
The 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air will be available through the Apple Authorized Resellers in India. The 1.4-GHz 11-inch MacBook Air with 2GB of memory and 64GB of flash storage starts at a price of Rs. 60,900 with a 128GB model for Rs. 72,900. The 1.86 GHz 13-inch MacBook Air with 2GB of memory and 128GB of flash storage starts at a price of Rs. 79,900 with a 256GB model availabe for Rs. 98,900. Configure-to-order options and accessories include faster processors, 4GB of memory, MacBook Air SuperDrive and a USB Ethernet Adapter.
Tip: Students are eligible for certain discounts on Mac purchases. So if you think MacBooks are costly, this should (hopefully) ease the blow on your pocket.

RIM Playbook to support Android apps : )

RIM PlayBook enthusiasts, more reason to be happy. RIM said on Thursday it will allow optional "app players" to be bundled with the PlayBook tablet which will have run-time environments for BlackBerry Java and Android 2.3 apps from BlackBerry App World.

Porting over the ability to run Android apps on the RIM PlayBook tablet which runs on BlackBerry Tablet OS is a welcome move.
It is also an admission: lack of enough apps for the PlayBook on its existing Blackberry Tablet OS platform. RIM is no doubt leveraging the strength of Android, and its thriving community of app developers, to get a piece of the action, so to speak -- instead of wooing developers on to its platform.

According to RIM, developers will still have to submit their apps for approval to the App World. The Android apps will run in a sandbox on the PlayBook to keep them secure. RIM is also planning to release a native SDK for developers to build PlayBook apps a lot easier.
Earlier in the week, RIM revealed the pricing of the PlayBook tablet (US $499 starting price) and its availability in the U.S. starting April 19.

Google API Explorer for App Developers Revealed

Application developers, time to break into a jig. Google unveiled API Explorer, a browser-based tool to help app developers. It's a one-stop destination where developers can see how to embed Google product APIs in their applications.
 In a blog post, Google announced the API Explorer supports over half a dozen APIs: Google Buzz, Custom Search, Diacritize, Moderator, Shopping, Translate, URL Shortener (or Goo.gl).



 
 The Explorer makes it easier for developers to discover what APIs we offer and get started using them within minutes, Google said. And through Google API Explorer, app developers can test Google APIs within the Web browser. By selecting an API you want to explore, you can see all the available methods and parameters along with inline documentation