News: Airport Utility updated, MacBook Air LandingZone, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and more!

Apple has released an updated version of their AirPort Utility for Lion, and now it looks very much like its iOS counterpart. The updated AirPort Utility for Mac brings the version number up to 6, features a new visual map of your network, and is generally a very nice upgrade. Some users may lament over the ability to see client signal strength and other detailed information such as logged data, but overall this is a refreshing updated aimed at making things more visual for users.

The Verge has a hands-on session with the MacBook Air LandingZone, a curiously Thunderbolt-less dock for the MacBook Air that was recently successfully funded on Kickstarter. The LandingZone comes in both 11 and 13-inch flavours to suit both models of MacBook Air, features two USB ports, an Ethernet port as well as mini DisplayPort passthrough, but there's no Thunderbolt port to be seen.

Bill Gates wrote a letter to Steve Jobs as the latter was dying, and reports say Jobs kept the letter by his bedside. The Telegraph has the full story, including details on how Jobs' wife Laurene phoned Gates later on and told him how much the letter meant to Jobs.

TextExpander may be the king of Mac TextExpander apps, but there are often free alternatives that do similar jobs. Mac AppStorm compares two such free alternatives, DashExpander and xType.