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Your First Day With A New Mac: The Get-started Guide For Windows Users
Apple's Secret Holiday Weapon: A Redesigned Macbook Pro
Palluxo Reviews Apple's Unibody Aluminum 13-inch MacBook
OS shoot-out: Windows vs. Mac OS X vs. Linux
Ubuntu Linux and Boot Camp Make It Easy to Create a Triple Boot Mac
Netbook Enthusiast Web Sites Getting C & D Using Term “Netbook”
We May Need a New Name For Small, Cheap Notebooks
Gmail Annoys You? Every Other Mail Client Annoys Me
Psystar (Incorrectly) Claims Apple Failed to Copyright Mac OS X
Apple and Microsoft: Best Friends Forever?
Apple Will License OS X To PC Vendors Says Blogger
Amazon's Christmas bestsellers: Acer, Apple and Asus
Sony Teases Small Notebook Fans With 'New Mobile' Vaio Promo
The Mac Night Owl: Is the Mac Mini a Bait and Switch Scheme?
The Mac Night Owl: The Microsoft On-The-Skids Report
Your First Day With A New Mac: The Get-started Guide For Windows Users
TechRadar says:
Just got a new Mac for Christmas and feeling a little bewildered?
Fear not - Switch to Mac, brought to you by our colleagues over on MacFormat magazine, shows new Mac users how to move comfortably from the familiarity of Windows.
Below are 20 common tasks that PC owners perform without thinking about, and their equivalents on a Mac - just as easy!
You can check it out at:
http://tinyurl.com/7ob5hx
Apple's Secret Holiday Weapon: A Redesigned Macbook Pro
Seeking Alpha contributor "Compete" says:
A lot has been written about the phenomenal success of the iPhone, but another Apple product line, the Macbook, has been booming in the background. Macbook sales have skyrocketed over the last 2 years: Apple sold 1.675 million laptops in their fiscal Q4 2008, up 70% over the same period in 2006.
This holiday season, Apple appears poised to capitalize on this tremendous sales growth with a new line of Macbook and Macbook Pro computers....
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/95fc9e
Palluxo Reviews Apple's Unibody Aluminum 13-inch MacBook
Palluxo reports:
New 13-inch aluminum MacBook from Apple has been the single best-selling laptop of any brand in U.S. retail stores for the past several months. In terms of hardware, this is a remarkable engineering achievement, but it does have some insignificant drawbacks. After all, nothing is perfect.....
Glossy screens... tend to exaggerate colors and shade, to the point in which they over-saturate and have poorer grayscale accuracy. This makes glossy displays unsuitable for people who seek to use their computers for graphics work which requires color accuracy.....
It is disappointing that FireWire port is not available.....
If you are looking to play games on this laptop, then you might find yourself a bit dissapointed.....
For the full review visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/7x9hfg
OS shoot-out: Windows vs. Mac OS X vs. Linux
InfoWorld's Galen Gruman says:
The Mac's been on a roll, both due to its highly regarded Mac OS X Leopard operating system and to an unhappy reception for Microsoft's Windows Vista. The result: For the first time in memory, the Mac's market share has hit 9.1 percent, according to IDC data, and Windows' market share has dipped below 90 percent. (Linux distributions make up the rest.)
But can either Mac OS X or Linux be more than a niche OS? After all, Windows runs practically everything, from widely used productivity apps such as spreadsheets to highly niche applications such as chemical modeling. Mac OS X and Linux simply don't have the app base that Windows does. Of course, the fact you can run Windows on a Mac or Linux system, thanks to Parallels Desktop and EMC VMware Fusion, lets you have your cake and eat it too.
For some users - often technically savvy people such as engineers, consultants, designers, and CTOs - it is clearly an option that already works quite well.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/137746/2008/12/osshootout.html
Ubuntu Linux and Boot Camp Make It Easy to Create a Triple Boot Mac
Low End Mac's Alan Zisman says:
When Apple's Macintosh computers migrated from using PowerPC CPUs to using Intel chips, the hacker community took it as a challenge to find to a way to run standard PC operating systems - primarily Windows and Linux - on the new Macs. The ways they came up with worked - but as with so-called Hackintoshes (non-Apple PCs running Mac OS X), it wasn't pretty, and it wasn't something that most users wanted to try on their own. (See, for instance, my June 2006 column, Windows XP on Macintel a Reality.)
Apple forestalled all this by releasing Boot Camp - first as a beta that ran on then-current Mac OS X 10.4 and later as a Leopard-only official release.....
The major limitation, at least for me, is that Boot Camp lets users install any PC operating system they want, as long as it's Windows XP (SP2 or later) or Vista. (And note that upgrade versions of these are not supported, at least not easily.)....
I've wanted to be able to install Linux on my Mac. I can run Linux in a virtual session using my choice of Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, or the free VirtualBox, but I'd like the option of booting my system directly to a Linux installation.
Googling something like Mac Boot Camp Linux gets pages of links showing that it's possible . . . but the first hit - a 2007 article, Triple Boot via BootCamp Ubuntu - makes it seem more daunting that I want to get into. Early on, the user is guided through using the Terminal to repartition the hard drive, the first of a long list of command-line actions.
Sorry, I don't want to go there.
The 2008 versions (8.04 and 8.10) of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution adds a feature that makes all this command-line stuff unnecessary. Those versions offer the option of installing Ubuntu Linux from within Windows and making use of the Windows file system - no repartitioning necessary.
For the full report visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/mac2win/08m2w/triple-boot-mac.html
Netbook Enthusiast Web Sites Getting C & D Using Term “Netbook”
jkontherun.com's James Kendrick reports:
This is very preliminary but we are hearing that some netbook enthusiast sites are getting “cease & desist” letters from a firm in the UK ordering the sites to stop using the term “netbook”. The letters claim that the term netbook is trademarked by the firm that produced the Psion netBook in the early 2000’s.
We have not received one of these letters but have corresponded with a site owner who did receive one and they were ordered to remove the term “netbook” from content by March 2009 or face legal action.
To read more, including a reproduction of the C&D letter, visit:
http:///2008/12/23/netbook-enthusiast-web-sites-getting-c-d-using-term-netbook/
We May Need a New Name For Small, Cheap Notebooks
Technologizer's Harry McCracken says:
Back in the mid-1990s, I loved my Psion PDA as much as any gadget I've ever owned. But Psion stopped making consumer products years ago, and I wasn't even positive if the company - which spun off its software unit into phone OS powerhouse Symbian - was still in business.
Well, it is. And JK on the Run is reporting that its lawyers are sending letters to netbook sites telling them they have until the end of March to stop using the term "netbook." That's because Psion once made a subnotebook called the netBook, and apparently still has a trademark on the name.
.....The possibility remains that Psion (which calls itself Psion Teklogix these days) may succeed in squelching use of "netbook." Which would mean we'd need a new name for small, cheap notebooks.....
Or we could simply call them…notebooks. Which is what they are.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://technologizer.com/2008/12/24/we-may-need-a-new-name-for-netbooks/
Gmail Annoys You? Every Other Mail Client Annoys Me
ZNet's Garett Rogers reports:
I personally use Gmail for everything - including both work and personal email. Once you truely drink the juice, it's really hard to go back to another mail client.
Dan Resinger offers a list of 5 things that annoy him about Gmail - I'm going to do the opposite, and tell you 5 things that annoy me about every other mail client on the planet, since I'm a true full-time Gmail user.....
You can check it out at:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=1212
Psystar (Incorrectly) Claims Apple Failed to Copyright Mac OS X
MacObserver's Bryan Chaffin reports:
Psystar is asking the courts to dismiss Apple Inc.'s copyright infringement suit against Psystar on the basis that Apple failed to actually get a copyright for Mac OS X. The request came in court documents filed as the company's Answer to Apple's First Amended Complaint, but a search of the Library of Congress's Copyright Office found copyrights for "Mac OS X Server Version 10.5 Leopard" and "Mac OS X Leopard 10.5" belonging to Apple.
Both copyrights are dated October 26th, 2007.
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/7z2odw
Apple and Microsoft: Best Friends Forever?
Low End Mac's Frank Fox says:
For years, developers gave the same old story that it wasn't worth developing software for Macs because the market share was too low. However, one company has developed for the Macs through it all. (That's not to say there weren't threats and bargains made to keep up support.)
Mac users actually rewarded Microsoft by having a higher purchase rate for Excel than Windows users - and nearly as high for Word at times.
If Microsoft was making money, why not develop for the Mac?....
When it comes down to it, Apple is mostly a hardware company, and Microsoft is mostly a software company. It shouldn't be surprising that they find common ground for selling products to each other's customers.
Despite all the differences, these two companies still need each other.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/ed/fox/08ff/apple-microsoft-bff.html
Apple Will License OS X To PC Vendors Says Blogger
dougitdesign.com says:
I have seen the future, and the Mac OS will eventually be available to (almost) all PC's as an alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system!
First we have Mac's move to Intel as their CPU, then add the Psystar situation, mix in the EfiX dongle, throw in a dash of "Hackintosh," sprinkle it on top with recent Mac hardware that is, IMHO, less-than-the-best, bake it at 350 degrees in a depressed-economy oven for a year or two, and in a short amount of time the chef, who soon might not be Steve Jobs, pulls the Mac Operating System out of the oven and sells a piece of the cake to any computer hardware manufacture or individual user who will pony-up the $$.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://dougitdesign.com/blog.html
Amazon's Christmas bestsellers: Acer, Apple and Asus
Apple 2.0's Philip Elmer-DeWitt says:
Look what Santa left under Amazon.com's tree this Christmas morning:
7 Acer netbooks
7 Apple MacBooks
4 Asus netbooks
2 Samsung netbooks
2 MSI netbooks
1 OLPC (One laptop per child) XO laptop
1 Lenova Ideapad laptop
1 Toshiba Satellite laptop.....
Except for the MacBooks and one $599 Toshiba, every computer on that list sells for less than $500.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/83spkc
Sony Teases Small Notebook Fans With 'New Mobile' Vaio Promo
The Register's Tony Smith reports:
Sony is now teasing Japanese punters about what could be a new, tiny Vaio notebook, having begun baiting New Zealanders earlier this week.
Sony Japan's website now shows a statuesque young woman whip a long, thin package out of her handbag. The box slims down to an envelope and out slides an 'invite' for the forthcoming "New Mobile" launch.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/12/24/sony_teases_netbook_fans/
The Mac Night Owl: Is the Mac Mini a Bait and Switch Scheme?
At one time, Apple had to endure the accusation that they were overcharging for their products. You had to pay the alleged "Apple Tax" if you went Mac, whereas the PC was clearly a whole lot cheaper.
Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://www.macnightowl.com/2008/12/is-the-mac-mini-a-bait-and-switch-scheme/
Notes: You can also access our new RSS feed, available at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/rss
Or our new Atom feed at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/atom
The Mac Night Owl: The Microsoft On-The-Skids Report
It appears that no company is immune from economic woes. Toyota, now the world's largest automaker, was once thought to be bulletproof, yet the company is about about to suffer from the first financial loss in its history. Apple appears to be cutting back on production for this quarter, although it seems certain they'll still report decent profits.
Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://www.macnightowl.com/2008/12/the-microsoft-on-the-skids-report/
Notes: You can also access our new RSS feed, available at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/rss
Or our new Atom feed at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/atom
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