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Psystar Clones "Do Not Support Leopard Reinstallation" - Report
Record Laptop Sales Drive $1.05B Apple Profit
Apple Riding a 51% Jump in Mac Sales
Apple's Ultra-thin MacBook Air Also Slim On Profits?
Apple CEO Sued Again Over Options Backdating
DoD May Push Back On Apple's P.A. Semi PowerPC Bid
Apple Air Laptop's Shortcomings Are Easy To Forgive
Why People Spend More At Apple Stores
Apple Never Did Bare Bones
Apple Exhibits 'Astounding' Resilience
Reducing the Amount of Juice Electronic Gadgets Consume
Trends In PC and Mac Shipments
Jeans With A Keyboard Crotch; Type In Public, Get Arrested, Regret Rubbish Purchase
Psystar Clones "Do Not Support Leopard Reinstallation"ixIt
MacFixIt reports:
Psystar's plan to offer $400 systems capable of running Mac OS X Leopard has been met blunt skepticism, but the company is now claiming to have already shipped orders. Psystar has also posted a video on its site demonstrating one of its "Open Computers" running Leopard.
Troubleshooting ramifications for such systems are manifold: potential issues applying future software updates, no chance of Leopard support from Apple, and the questionable nature of a warranty from an unknown company.
Perhaps most disconcerting, however, is a message that MacFixIt reader, Tim Thomason, received from Psystar's support team, which reads:
"We absolutely do not support customers attempting to install the Leopard operating system on our Open Computer themselves. This is due to a difficult process that we go through to get Leopard to function on our computers. We encourage you to purchase an open computer, and select the option to have Leopard Pre-installed."
For the full report visit here:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20080424103119539
Record Laptop Sales Drive $1.05B Apple Profit
Macworld's Jim Dalrymple and Philip Michaels report:
Strong demand for Macs driven by record laptop sales helped Apple turn a $1.05 billion profit for its fiscal second quarter. The company sold 2.2 million Macs from January to March, helping drive sales of $7.51 billion for the strongest March quarter in Apple's history.
Apple's profit rose 36 percent from the second quarter of 2007, with revenue rising 43 percent.....
Laptops sparked the growth in second-quarter Mac sales. Apple sold 1.43 million portables during the quarter, an increase of 61 percent over 2007.,,,
Despite topping the 2 million mark in Mac sales for the quarter, Apple ended its run of quarterly Mac sales records; the company had set a new record for total Mac sales in each of the last three quarters. However, the 1.43 million laptops sold during the quarter set a new record for the company.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/133145/2008/04/profit.html
Apple Riding a 51% Jump in Mac Sales
The New York Times' John Markoff reports:
Signs of a consumer slowdown abound in the United States, but Apple customers appear not to have noticed.
Buoyed by unusually strong Macintosh sales, the company grew notably faster than the rest of the computer market worldwide in the first three months of the year. Revenue increased 43 percent from the same period a year ago, the company reported. Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, characterized the quarter as the strongest in Apple's history.
For the full report visit here:
http://biz.yahoo.com/nytimes/080424/1194768387705.html?.v=14
Apple's Ultra-thin MacBook Air Also Slim On Profits?
Appleinsider's Slash Lane says:
In its determination to deliver the world's thinnest notebook, Apple admitted to sacrificing some speed and versatility, but a new analysis suggests that it may have given up some early profits as well.
Though the Cupertino-based Mac maker largely beat estimates for its second fiscal quarter on Wednesday, one sore spot appeared to be gross margin, which came in at about 100 to 200 basis points below most analysts' expectations at 32.9 percent.
....Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster offered his own explanation.
"We believe the margin outlook may be viewed negatively by investors, who likely wanted to see more of Apple's significant revenue upside trickle down to earnings," he wrote in a note to clients early Thursday morning. "The bottom line, we believe the margin was negativity impacted by a higher mix of Mac Book Air, which we now believe carries a lower margin."
To read more, click here.
Apple CEO Sued Again Over Options Backdating
Fortune's Colin Barr reports:
The options backdating scandal at Apple lives on. CEO Steve Jobs and the rest of the company's directors face another private lawsuit over the tech titan's handling of employee stock options.
The Boston Retirement Board claims Apple wasted $105 million by giving Jobs backdated stock options - options that were issued at a below-market price to make the grants more profitable for the recipient. The suit, filed last week in state court in California (case no. 108CV110403), was reported first by FindLaw.com. The pension fund contends the directors who granted the backdated options should be held liable for the damage they caused the company.
To read more, click here.
DoD May Push Back On Apple's P.A. Semi PowerPC Bid
EE Times' Rick Merritt
Apple Inc. may have to face the ire of the U.S. Department of Defense following its planned acquisition of P.A. Semi Inc. The startup's PWRficient processor is designed into DoD programs in every major branch of the armed services, said one P.A. Semi customer who expects Apple will end production of the parts.
"We've had customers saying they are going to the DoD on this one," said a source in one of the several companies making embedded computer boards with the processor.....
...Users include defense giants such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, the source said.
For the full report visit here:
http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=207401605
Apple Air Laptop's Shortcomings Are Easy To Forgive
The Boston Globe's Hiawatha Bray says:
The one-month loan is nearly over, and I'll soon have to pack up a borrowed MacBook Air laptop and ship it back to Apple Inc. It will hurt. Apple's vaunted ultrathin computer is the most attractive laptop ever.
Not the best, though. The Air's elegant form sacrifices a lot of functions found on even the cheapest laptops, not to mention its closest, thinnest rival, the ThinkPad X300 from Chinese laptop maker Lenovo. Instead, Apple offers gleaming aluminum, and assurances that nobody will mind the missing features.
And for the most part, I didn't.
To read more, click here.
Why People Spend More At Apple Stores
The VAR Guy says:
Just when The VAR Guy was losing faith in customer service, he had a great experience at an Apple Store.
First, a little background. The VAR Guy spends about 12-hours a day on his MacBook Pro. At two years old, the notebook is starting to show its age. And certain keys on the keyboard are starting to fail.
Blogging for a living on a worn-out keyboard is no fun.
So, The VAR Guy hoped for help — and got it at the Apple Store in Atlanta. A 15-minute, free repair reinforced The VAR Guy's faith in Apple, and prompted our resident blogger to spend a few bucks at the store.....
Now, imagine if The VAR Guy had a similar keyboard problem with a traditional Wintel PC,,,.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/04/24/why-people-spend-more-at-apple-stores/
Apple Never Did Bare Bones
ITWire's Stephen Withers says:
Every now and again, people come up with suggestions about what sort of computer Apple should make, but currently doesn't.
A reader's letter to Low End Mac included the line "I'd love to see Apple return to its roots and sell a bare bones computer. That's what the Apple I was..."
That's an interesting kind of revisionism.
The Apple I might have been "bare bones" in the sense that it didn't include a case (that didn't arrive until the Apple II), but by the standards of the day it was unusually well featured - a trend that the company has continued. Apple generally doesn't offer minimal specifications with the primary purpose of advertising them at low prices as a starting point for optioning-up to more realistic, more expensive and also more profitable configurations.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17834/1151/
Apple Exhibits 'Astounding' Resilience
FT's Kevin Allison says:
Can Apple's winning streak continue? That was the question vexing technology analysts on Thursday after the computer maker shrugged off recession fears to report bumper sales and profits on Wednesday.....
With its computers commanding higher prices than many of its competitors, and with its unusually high exposure to the US consumer market, some analysts had feared that Apple could be vulnerable if a US downturn caused consumers to rein in spending.
Judging by Apple's performance in the second quarter, that hasn't happened – at least, not yet.
To read more, click here.
Reducing the Amount of Juice Electronic Gadgets Consume
The New York Times' David Pogue says:
"Vampire power" has been bugging me ever since I first heard of it.
It's the juice consumed by electronic gadgets even when they're turned off (also called phantom loads, standby power or leaking electricity). They just sit there, plugged in, sucking electricity, at a cost to you and to the environment. According to the Energy Department, vampire gadgets account for about 25 percent of total residential electricity consumption in the U.S. 25 percent of the power used by home electronics is consumed while they are turned off.
......vampire power has gone off the rails. Cumulatively, these gadgets cost us, our country and our environment way too much for what they give us......
If they can put a man on the moon, surely they can come up with an *automatic* solution to phantom power.....
One compamy has.
To find out more, click here.
Trends In PC and Mac Shipments
Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog says:
Even as Apple and Microsoft expand into new markets, the computer business remains a big financial driver for both companies. Illustrating that point, Apple reported a 51 percent increase in Mac shipments yesterday, contributing to a big increase in profits. And some analysts suspect that better-than-expected PC shipments may have boosted Microsoft's latest quarterly results, which are set for release this afternoon.
So it's a good time to revisit the trends in PC and Mac shipments.... The numbers show the Mac experiencing significant growth in recent quarters. In comparing that to PC growth, the effect is magnified because the Mac is growing from a smaller base, a sliver of the overall personal-computer market. But it's still an interesting trend to observe.
You can check it out at:
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/137350.asp?source=rss
Jeans With A Keyboard Crotch; Type In Public, Get Arrested, Regret Rubbish Purchase
T3.com says:
You've got to love a bit of convergence..... As long as it's not a massive steaming pile of old spunk, that is.
Unfortunately, these novelty keyboard jeans are exactly that. Designed by Erik De Nijs, the bumbling inventor has foolishly located the keyboard directly over your man area, meaning any attempts at typing in a public place are likely to render you branded some kind of self-touchy perv. And reaching for the mouse handily located in the back pocket will surely only compound matters.
To read more, click here.
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