Look ing back this week, it was a watershed time for Apple. A lot of the news centered on reported problems with the Infineon 3G radio system in the iPhone 3G, and that came on the heels of of an embarrassing MobileMe roll out. Apple found out that when even the smallest glitch appears in…
John Martellaro
John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. With degrees in astrophysics (B.S.) and physics (M.S.), he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include chess, science fiction and astronomy. John is the host of the TMO podcast Background Mode.
Articles by John Martellaro
Dvorak Has Right Idea, Wrong Platform
John Dvorak claims that itis time for Adobe to fight back against Microsoftis Silverlight initiative by porting its flagship apps to Linux. Itis the right kind of thinking, just the wrong platform. Mr. Dvorak, in a well considered editorial took a look at the emergence of Silverlight, the situation with the NBC coverage of the…
NVIDA Takes $200M Charge for Bad Graphics Chips
NVIDIA has taken a one-time charge of US$196M to cover the cost of replacing some bad graphics chips under warranty, according to Computerworld on Wednesday. The problem has affected computers from Hewlett-Packard, Dell and some from Apple. The problem, previously reported, appears to be related to a substrate material in some graphics chips that malfunctions…
The Case for SSDs in New MacBook Pros
Apple hasnit made any announcements about the next generation MacBook Pros, but when they do, itis getting to be fairly realistic for Apple to make SSDs an option, especially since Dell is leading the way, according to Computerworld on Wednesday. Some thought it would take several years for Sold State Drives (SSD) to be a…
Microsoft Releases Two MS Office Updates
Microsoft released updates for both Office 2004 and Office 2008 for the Mac late on Tuesday. The updates are available at the Mactopia downloads site. Version 11.5.1 is for Office 2004 and version 12.1.2 is for Office 2008. The update for Office 2008 is 153 MB and can be found in the column labelled “Newest”…
Net Nanny for Mac Released
ContentWatch announced the release of Net Nanny for the Mac on Tuesday. With the release, Net Nanny is now available for both Windows and Mac users. “With Net Nanny for Mac, users can protect their computers and safeguard their children from unwanted Internet content. Net Nanny for Mac establishes a barrier around your computer with…
Gartner Reports iPhone Enterprise Ready - with Caveats
There have been several conflicting reports on the suitability of the iPhone for the enterprise, even with Apple’s enterprise portfolio of features in the iPhone 2.0 software. Gartner looked at OS X iPhone 2.0 and sized up its readiness according to a set of minimum requirements and found the iPhone to be “ready for the…
Exploring the Differences Between StarOffice and OpenOffice
Both StarOffice 9 and OpenOffice.org 3 will offer an office suite of tools compatible with Microsoft Office. Both are based on the same code base, and both will be native on the Mac, no longer requiring X11. Sun’s Louis Suarez-Potts explained the key differences to TMO and what the customer should know before selecting one…
YML Tonight: All About Photography with Scott Kelby
Your Mac Life (YML), with Shawn King, which airs every Wednesday night, will be all about one of YMLis favorite subjects: photography. Scott Kelby, photoshop guru, will be on hand to chat about it. “Photoshop Guru Scott Kelby is organizing a iWorldwide Photo Walki on August 23rd. He has asked Your Mac Life to lead…
Apple Security Team Pulled from Black Hat Conference
“[Apple] Marketing got wind of it, and nobody at Apple is ever allowed to speak publicly about anything without marketing approval,” said Black Hat Conference Director, Jeff Moss. “It was them talking about security engineering and how they take security seriously,” Moss said. “It would have put Apple in a positive light.”The team was not…
Activating, Configuring and Deploying iPhone in a Business Environment
Apple has added a wealth of features in iPhone 2.0 software to make it enterprise ready. While arguments linger on the suitability of the iPhone for enterprise and comparisons to the BlackBerry continue, for those IT managers who want to properly deploy the iPhone, Ryan Fass at Computerworld has launched a detailed series on Wednesday…
Apple Struggling to Fix Enterprise Mac Issues
Researchers have discovered a flaw in the UNIX BIND software that translates human readable domain names into IP addresses. Microsoft and Cisco have released patches, but so far Apple has not. In addition, Mac OS X 10.5.3 and 10.5.4 have broken the BSM auditing system critical for some government installations. The vulnerability in the BIND…
Absoft Announces Fortran Fx3 Debugging with Xcode 3.1
Absoft has announced that users will now have significantly improved Fortran debugging capability with the combination of the their Fx3 debugger and Xcode 3.1. Absoft said on Tuesday that “this improved functionality is the combined result of the updated development tools included with Appleis new Xcode 3.1 and the advanced debugging capabilities of Absoftis latest…
BW: Responsible Discussion of Steve Jobs' Health in Order
A proven and well informed source has said that Mr. Jobsi cancer has not returned, according to Arik Hesseldahl at BusinessWeek. Unfortunately, many of the recent discussions about Mr. Jobsi health are idle, speculative, and uninformed. “When questions were raised about his appearance at WWDC, spokeswoman Katie Cotton said he had been suffering from a…
ATR Forecasts Strong June Qtr for Apple
American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu predicted on Thursday that Apple will show strong results for its fiscal 3rd quarter than ended in June. The expectation is US$7.3B in revenue, $1.10 EPS, 2.5 million Macs, 10.5 million iPods and 705,000 (2G) iPhones. In a research note to investors, obtained by TMO, Mr. Wu enumerated key…
Apple Lawsuit Against Psystar Filed
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Psystar, a Miami-based company that has been selling Intel computers bundled and running with Mac OS X. The note appeared in Jorge Espinosais blog on Tuesday. The suit was filed in the federal district court for the northern district of California against Psystar on July 3. “The suit alleges…
Quantum Oscillations in the Applesphere
/> This was a significant week in Apple’s history. In the past, Apple’s well tuned marketing engine worked just as well, but the Mac faithful just weren’t present in sufficient numbers to jar the Applesphere. However, the decisions Apple made regarding the secrecy of the iPhone 2.0 and iPhone 3G rollout may have come back…
Microsoft: We Have a Noisy Competitor
Brad Brooks, Microsoftis VP of Vista consumer marketing, in a keynote address to to the annual Partner conference, admitted that the Apple “Get a Mac” TV ads have had an impact, and Microsoft is going to start countering. In his discussion of the Vista launch, Mr. Brooks was frank and acknowledged that his company screwed…
Segway CTO Joining Apple
Doug Field, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Segway will be leaving to join Apple, according to a post on the Segway Chat Forum by the administrator, John Grohol. “Doug has been the driving force in making the Segway what it is today and will be sorely missed at the company. However, with every change…
MCE Ships Recordable Blu-ray For Mac: $499
MCE Technologies, LLC announced the immediate availability of its 6X Blu-ray recordable drive for PowerMac and Mac Pro on Monday. Unlike previous drives, it is natively recordable with Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later and can record data directly from the Finder with no additional software required. The MCE 6X Blu-ray Recordable Drive is capable…
Intel: Developers Should Face up to Hundreds, Thousands of Cores
In his Intel blog on Monday, Anwar Ghuloum told developers he had some difficult news to deliver: developers should start to think about many, many more cores in the Intel CPUs — perhaps thousands in the long term. Apple may be anticipating this with the new Grand Central technology in Snow Leopard. Mr. Ghuloum commented…
comScore: Internet Search for iPhone Jumps 47% in April
ComScore released a report last week that showed a dramatic jump, 47 percent, in internet search for the term iPhone in April, 2008, as word of the iPhone 3G circulated on the Internet. About 1.3 million people conducted 6.9 million searches for iPhone-related terms, a significant increase from previous months. “Speculation had been rampant in…
Two New Take Control Books Explain Mac Backups
Take Control Books has published two books for new and experienced Mac Users on backups. “Take Control of Easy Backups in Leopard,” covers fastest and easiest way to create a complete Leopard backup system while “Take Control of Mac OS X Backup,” in its third edition, takes the experienced user beyond Time Machine with more…
Mariner Releases MacGourmet Deluxe 1.0
Mariner Software released MacGourmet Deluxe 1.0 on Wednesday, ultra-modern recipe and wine management software for OS X. “MacGourmet Deluxe brings recipe collection and organization into the digital age. Users are able to create, edit and share recipes; make wine and cooking notes, and easily import recipes found on the Web and expand their collection. Recipes…