The company is still pitching Open Computer directly at potential Mac OS X users who want to buy their hardware at a lower price than Apple charges. Psystar extensively compares its product, which starts at US$399, to Appleis Mac mini, which starts at $599, those said comparisons never mention issues such as size. Open Computer,…
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Tom Yager, After a Break from Apple, Reports
Tom Yager has been a strong proponent for and expert reporter on Apple products and technologies for Infoworld. Recently, he took a self-imposed break from Apple hardware to gain some new perspective. Now, heis back and reported on Tuesday that there are some compelling technologies outside the Apple sphere, but heis also found a new…
Apple, Sony Settle Battery Fire Lawsuit in Japan
Apple Japan and Sony have jointly agreed to pay a couple in Japan Y1.3M (US$12,800) after they sued for damages when an Apple computer with a Sony battery caught fire, according to the Kyodo News Agency and reported by Dow Jones. The man suffered burns on his fingers. The lawsuit, filed in July 2007, said…
Making the Switch From Eudora to Apple Mail
Tonya Engst at Tidbits.com decided it was finally time to make the switch from Eudora to Apple Mail. She told the story of what happened and what she learned along the way on Sunday. “After months of hemming and hawing, I recently took the plunge and switched from Eudora to Apple Mail,” Ms. Engst wrote.…
Podcast - Apple Weekly Report #122: Apple vs. NY and MS vs. Yahoo
Direct Link: MP3 Version Apple is seeing red over New York’s Green logo, Adobe’s 64-bit apps are coming to Windows first, Final Cut Server finally sees the light of day, iPhones get cheap in Germany. Microsoft’s buyout battle with Yahoo is heating up, and Germany’s iTunes Store now offers more than music. This week’s Quick…
Analyst Sacconaghi Predicts Apple's Q2 Numbers
Apple will come in at slightly higher than consensus revenues at US$6.99B, according to Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi who provided his estimates on Friday. In addition, Mr. Sacconaghi put his estimated earnings per share (EPS) at US$1.12, gross margins at 35 percent, higher than Appleis previous guidance of 32 percent thanks to favorable NAND…
Microsoft Retail Stores Would Fail
Rumors are floating around that Microsoft is considering retail stores, like Appleis, to showcase its products. The problem is, thereis nothing to showcase, and while Apple understands the retail store paradigm and has products to back it up, Microsoft does not. This week, BusinessWeek in addition to analysts from Gartner have pointed out that the…
iChat: Chatting Outside the Bubbles
One of the cool little tricks iChat has up its sleeve harkens back to the days when IRC clients ruled the land. If you start a message with “/me” iChat will transmit the message with your name first followed by your text, and it will all land in the chat outside of a chat bubble.…
Signiant Will Announce Apple FCP Support at NAB
Signiant, developer of a major digital media distribution management solution (DMDMS), will announce support for Appleis Final Cut Pro at the NAB show next week. Their system provides global, networked high speed file transfer, security, central management, automation, workflow and media integration. The DMDMS system acts as an additional architectural layer that allows Avid users,…
Yahoo CEO Bashes Microsoft Takeover Threats
Mr. Ballmer stated “If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo board.” Despite the ultimatum, Yahoo doesnit seem to be interested in…
Comcast vs. BitTorrent
The corporate and conservative Comcast has never been a friend of Internet neutrality. The free-wheeling BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that rose to prominence in the wake of Napster’s demise, has never been held up as a bastion of ethical use of the Internet. So you should not be surprised to hear that Comcast…
Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive
As computers continue to become ever more portable, it stands to reason that external hard drives will follow suit. Reliability, versatility and durability are all important in a portable hard drive, and Iomegais eGo offers all three along with good looks, too. The eGo sports a flask-shaped metal shell thatis available in several colors, 160GB…
Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #148: Geeks on a RAM-page, Networking, Time Capsule, and Some Fun
Show notes for Mac Geek Gab Podcast For April 7, 2008 Direct Links: MP3 Version or AAC Version (There was a problem with the original AAC conversion, but it has been fixed now. iTunes should just redownload a new copy, but if it doesn’t, you can force one. All copies on the Cachefly servers should…
Understanding Hard Disk Failure Rates
Hard Disk vendors publish a number for some hard disks called mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and that number has generally risen over the years to be more that a million hours in some cases. User experience, however, seems to differ from expectations, the term can be deceptive, and failure rates can often reach several…
Apple to NYC's Green Logo: No No No
Apple Inc. is not at all sanguine about New York City’s efforts to go green, at least when it comes to the logo the city is trying to trademark. Cupertino, CA-based Apple Inc. has filed a challenge against a federal trademark registration effort by GreeNYC, saying the logo (see below) the nonprofit is trying to…
Zonet Portable External SATA Hard Drive Case
A leather covered hard drive case? Is this an oxymoron? The Zonet ZNS8021 Portable External SATA Hard Drive Case is really cool to look at, but the leather case cover made me skeptical of itis cooling abilities at first. However the unit surprised me. It was able to run several movie length media files directly…
Intel Working on Notebook Anti-Theft Technology
Intel announced on Wednesday that that theyire working on an anti-theft technology that would render a stolen notebook computer useless, according to The Register. The operation of the CPU would be tied to the login authentication. Details remain sparse, and Intelis Mobility Group chief, Dadi Perlmutter, provided few specifics. Basically, however, the notebook computer would…
Photoshop Boss: 64-bit Adobe CS4 Coming to Windows First
“The development is frankly bittersweet for us: On the one hand weire delighted to be breaking new ground with Photoshop, and when processing very large files on a suitably equipped machine, Photoshop x64 realizes some big performance gains,” Mr. Nack said. “On the other hand, we work very hard at maintaining parity across platforms, and…
Microsoft's Yahoo Bid Not Going Up
One unnamed source commented “Thereis no reason to bid against ourselves.” Reports in March, however, seemed to indicate that Microsoft was considering an increase in its buy out offer. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney commented at the time “”While we continue to see no other competing bidders, we believe Yahoo is aggressively pursuing strategic alternatives. We…
Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #147: Geek Tales, AirPort Speeds, AirDisk Backups, Programming and Podcast Setup
Show notes for Mac Geek Gab Podcast For March 31, 2008 Direct Links: MP3 Version or AAC Version (courtesy of Michael Johnston of iPhone Alley). Dave and John talk through a few geek issues they encountered during the week. Then they discuss AirPort speeds, AirDisk Backups, how to get started programming and, by popular demand,…
Vista Falls in CanSecWest Security Challenge
Last week, the MacBook Air was the first to fall in the CanSecWest Hacker Challenge. On Friday, Vista suffered the same fate, but thanks to Adobeis Flash, according to Channel Web. Vista was running on a Fujitsu U810. A researcher, Shane Macaulay, won a US$5,000 cash prize when he exploited an unidentified Adobe Flash player…
Dell Beats Apple to Blu-Ray Punch With Inspiron 1525 Notebook
On Friday, Dell announced that they will be offering the Inspiron 1525 notebook computer with a Blu-ray drive starting at US$879, beating Apple — an early Blu-ray supporter, to market with a Blu-ray equipped laptop. The drive is a Blu-ray player, but can burn DVDs and CDs. “The Inspiron 1525 laptop is the one that…
Apple Releases AirPort Extreme Update 2008-001 for Tiger
Apple released AirPort Extreme Update 2008-001 for Tiger Thursday evening. Apple’s update notes are slim on details but do state “This update is recommended for all Intel-based Macintosh computers running Tiger OS and improves the reliability of AirPort connections.” The update requires Mac OS X 10.4.11, and is available via Software Update or as a…
Adobe Launches Web-based Photoshop Express Beta
Photoshop Express beta