Applelinks Tech Web Reader - Thursday, April 17, 2008
OC U. Students Savor Apple Proposal
Apple snags 6.6% share of US PC market in first quarter
IBM Offering Macs To Some Workers Using Windows
Hacker Blasts Mac Clone Maker's Licence 'Violation'
Open Computer: The First Macintosh Clone in a Decade
Fake Mac Maker Will Fight Apple, But Might Be Fake Itself
Suspicions Soar About Mac Clone Maker PsyStar
Mac Clone Violates More Than Apple's Licence
Ahead of the Curve: Back to the Mac
NBC to Apple: Build Antipiracy Into iTunes
Photoshop Version History
Blind Users Still Struggle With 'Maddening' Computing Obstacles
Comcast wants 'Bill of Rights' for file-sharers, ISPs
Depressed? How Your Mac Can Help Track Your Moods
Computer Viruses Hit One Million
Windows Vista update 'kills' USB devices
The Mac Night Owl: A Fast Look at Bogus Apple Inc. Issues
OC U. Students Savor Apple Proposal
The Oklahoman's Susan Simpson reports:
Oklahoma Christian University is transitioning from a PC-based to a Mac-based campus, giving students Apple MacBook laptops, iPods and iPhones.
Starting this month, students can trade in their university-issued Dell laptops for the Mac products. Students who don't want to pay for iPhone's cellular service, which also includes a media player and Internet browser, can opt for an iPod Touch, a media player that can access the Internet.
When the announcement was made during a recent Oklahoma Christian chapel service, students erupted in applause.
For the full report visit here:
http://newsok.com/article/3230585/1208313938
Apple snags 6.6% share of US PC market in first quarter
AppleInsider's Katie Marsal reports:
Mac maker Apple Inc. enjoyed strong retail sales during the first calendar quarter of 2008, boosting its share of the US personal computer market above 6 percent, according to a report released Wednesday by market research firm Gartner.
In total, the Cupertino-based company is said to have shipped over 1.01 million systems nationally, representing 32.5 percent growth and a 6.6 percent share of the US PC market, up from 762,000 systems and 5.2 percent share during the same three-month period last year.
For the full report click here.
IBM Offering Macs To Some Workers Using Windows
InformationWeek's Antone Gonsalves reports:
IBM on Wednesday said it's testing the use of Apple Macs within its research labs as part of the company's strategy of offering employees more than just Windows PCs.
About 100 researchers are using Mac computers in a small pilot program, an IBM spokeswoman said in an e-mail. The project, however, does not reflect a major strategy shift toward Apple inside IBM......
Of the 22 testers who provided feedback, 18 said that compared with their previous computers, the Mac notebooks offered a "better or best experience."
For the full report click here.
PowerPoint 2008 vs. Keynote '08 - The Office Suite Smackdown
Macworld says:
Is Apple's iWork a viable alternative to Microsoft Office? To find out, we asked Franklin N. Tessler - our go-to expert on presentation programs—to use PowerPoint 2008 and Keynote '08 to create the same project, progressing from the basics (data entry and formatting) to more-advanced features. Our questions: Which program is better at each stage of the job? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Which jobs (and which users) require which tool?
To compare Microsoft PowerPoint 2008 and Keynote '08, I used both programs to create a presentation on space exploration, starting with built-in templates and then adding some special effects.
For the full review visit here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/132979/2008/04/office_presentation.html
Hacker Blasts Mac Clone Maker's Licence 'Violation'
The Register's Tony Smith reports:
Psystar, the company claiming to offer a $400 computer capable of running off-the-shelf copies of Mac OS X, is not only annoying Apple - it has also managed to piss off the guy who wrote the emulation technology the system's Leopard compatibility hinges on....
Heralded by its manufacturer as "an alternative to pricey Apple hardware", the Open Computer's entry level spec combines a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of DDR 2 memory, a 250GB 7200rpm SATA hard drive, multi-format DVD writer and integrated Intel GMA950 graphics, all in a bland white or black casing....
"With the EFI V8 emulator it is possible to install Leopard's kernel straight from the DVD that you purchased at the Apple store barring the addition of a few drivers," says Psystar....
Enter the author of EFI V8. On his blog, Netkas.org, he writes: "[Psystar] said they sell computers with EFI V8 emulator... They forgot to mention author of emulator, so it's looks like they made EFI V8. So, this is violation of my authorship rights on PC EFI V8."
For the full report visit here:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/04/16/hacker_slams_mac_cloner/
Open Computer: The First Macintosh Clone in a Decade
Low End Mac's Alan Zisman says:
In the news this week: a small Florida-based company, Psystar offered customers what it promised were Mac OS X compatible PC clones for $399. For about half the price of a low-end Mac mini, Psystar's Open Computer offered a faster and bigger hard drive, a more powerful dedicated graphics card, and expandability in a generic PC clone tower case.
No operating system for that price, though. Psystar noted:
"With the EFI V8 emulator it is possible to install Leopard's kernel straight from the DVD that you purchased at the Apple Store barring the addition of a few drivers to ensure that everything boots and runs smoothly,"
The company also offered copies of Leopard for $150, and if you bought it from them, they would install it.
What's the catch? Ever since Apple canceled its clone licensing program in the late 1990s, the various versions of the Mac operating system have included a clause that customers could only run it on Apple-branded hardware.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/zisman/08az/psystar-open-computer.html
Fake Mac Maker Will Fight Apple, But Might Be Fake Itself
Wired's Charlie Sorrel says:
Psystar, makers of the OpenMac (now hastily renamed "Open Computer"), plans to fight Apple for the right to preinstall OS X Leopard on its 3rd party hackintosh. Apple's End User License Agreement expressly forbids installing the operating system on anything other than Apple hardware.
A spokesman for Psystar, named Robert (no surname given), told Information Week that his company believes Apple is committing some imagined anti-trust offense and violating US monopoly laws. Lets take a look at the arguments.
What if Honda said that, after you buy their car, you could only drive it on the roads they said you could?...
The Guardian's Charles Arthur did a little digging into the company and found out that it didn't exist until last week. No website, no presence at the Miami Chamber of Commerces (Psystar is based in Miami) and nobody answering the phones....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/fake-mac-maker.html
Suspicions Soar About Mac Clone Maker PsyStar
Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports:
The company that claimed it's selling Macintosh clones is supposedly located at a Miami address occupied by a T-shirt maker that today said there is no computer maker in its building, raising suspicions about the legitimacy of PsyStar Corp.
Also on Wednesday, the telephone number for PsyStar was disconnected.
For the full report click here.
Mac Clone Violates More Than Apple's Licence
MacUser UK's Simon Aughton reports:
It is not only Apple's software licence that Mac clone maker Psystar is violating with its new Leopard-running Open Computers.
In order to lever OS X onto its PC hardware, the company employs PC EFI, a third-party software patch that enables non-Apple hardware to run the Mac OS. But it is doing so in breach of the PC EFI licence, according to its author, Netkas.
For the full report click here.
Ahead of the Curve: Back to the Mac
InfoWorld's Tom Yager says:
Several months ago, I determined that my years-long fondness required reexamination. I quietly took a break from the Mac to get some perspective, to check out Vista, AMD, and Longhorn (Windows Server 2008) untainted by Apple's PR and uninfluenced by other journalists and bloggers. I elected to take a break from reviews of new Mac hardware, the occasion of which always piques my interest in Apple's platform....
I found enormous value in my time away from Mac. I made the kind of discoveries I used to make routinely before I took on the Mac as a specialty, and as I take up the Mac again - which I am doing immediately - it's clear that my appreciation for the platform is justified, and that the customary split of my effort and attention between Apple and AMD is justified.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisemac/archives/2008/04/ahead_of_the_cu.html
NBC to Apple: Build Antipiracy Into iTunes
News.com's Stephen Shankland reports:
NBC Universal would like to have its TV shows distributed once again through Apple's iTunes service, a top executive said Wednesday, but he called for antipiracy measures to help protect his business' revenue.
George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer at NBC Universal, didn't specifically mention Apple by name in his request, but it was clear he had the iPod maker in mind when it came to combating people's consumption of pirated content.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9920399-7.html
Photoshop Version History
Low End Mac's Matt Pearce says:
Photoshop began life as a program called Display that was made to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. Photoshop has grown to support layers, filters, brushes, text, 3D objects, video, and much others.
In 1987, Thomas Knoll, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, discovered that his new Mac Plus couldn't display grayscale images on its 1-bit black and white display. Because of this, Thomas began coding a program to do the job.
Thomas's brother John, an employee of George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic, soon showed interest in the project and recommended that it be developed into a full image editing program; it was at this time that the program was given a name: Display. Thomas took a six-month break from his studies to develop the program.
By 1988, Display had been renamed ImagePro and had enough features that the brothers decided to try to sell it commercially. ImagePro, which by then had been renamed Photoshop, was rejected by every company they came to, aside from Adobe. However a suitable deal was not reached with Adobe, and the brothers struck a temporary deal with scanner company, BarneyScan, to distribute Photoshop under the name BarneyScan XP. The deal was not forever, and when the contract ran out, the brothers returned to Adobe and sold them the wholesale rights in Sept. 1988. The brothers continued to work on the product, and in 1990 Photoshop 1.0 was released.
To read more, visit:
http://lowendmac.com/software/p/photoshop.html
Blind Users Still Struggle With 'Maddening' Computing Obstacles
Computerworld's Lamont Wood reports:
Put your graphical user interface to this test: Adjust the contrast on your display until the screen is completely black.
Now, perform basic e-mail, word processing and Web-browsing tasks.
What? Having a problem?
Welcome to the world of the 1.3 million Americans who are blind. For them, the world of personal computers, office automation and the Internet offers mixed blessings. That world wasn't designed for them, but with the right assistive technology, they can take part in it. When everything works well, they have access to an ocean of information vastly greater than anything previously available to the blind. But pitfalls and maddening frustrations are a constant reality.
Blind computer users mainly rely upon screen-reader software, which describes the activity on the screen and reads the text in the various windows,....
For the full report click here.
Comcast wants 'Bill of Rights' for file-sharers, ISPs
The Associated Press's Peter Svensson reports:
Comcast, under federal investigation for interfering with the traffic of its Internet subscribers, said Tuesday it wants to develop a "Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for file sharing.
The announcement expands on Comcast's new policy toward file-sharing: It said last month that rather than singling out such traffic and blocking some of it, the company will move toward a system that treats all types the same.
For the full report click here.
Depressed? How Your Mac Can Help Track Your Moods
Mac 360's Ron McElfresh reports:
Depression is a wide spread mood disorder that affects tens of millions of people, including Mac users. What can be done about it?
Optimism is a Mac utility that tracks depression characteristics in an advanced diary (a version is also available for Windows PC).
Depression is often defined as a severe despondency and dejection, typically felt over a period of time and accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy.
It's a serious disorder that covers a wide spectrum of moods, causes, symptoms, and severity. Depression can be difficult to identify and treat. Your Mac can help.
For the full report click here.
Computer Viruses Hit One Million
The BBC reports:
The number of viruses, worms and trojans in circulation has topped the one million mark.
The new high for malicious programs was revealed by security firm Symantec in the latest edition of its bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report.....
The vast majority of these viruses are aimed at PCs running Microsoft Windows and are variants of already existing malicious programs that have proved useful to hi-tech criminals in the past.
For the full report visit here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7340315.stm
Windows Vista update 'kills' USB devices
The Register's Kelly Fiveash reports:
Microsoft has admitted it is investigating reports that a recent Windows Vista security update causes havoc with some USB devices, but the software giant is yet to provide a fix for the cock-up.
The Windows Defender update was released last week, but some unfortunate Vista customers have claimed that their USB mice and keyboards among other devices refuse to work after the update is installed on their computers.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/vista_defender_sp1/
The Mac Night Owl: A Fast Look at Bogus Apple Inc. Issues
In recent days, I've commented about some issues that have gotten a fair amount of press lately. Like some of the silly arguments in our presidential campaign these days about who is "elite" and who isn't, I regard some of the most blatant spin that emerges from some tech pundits these days as completely wrongheaded. Some of it may even represent a manufactured controversy of one sort or another, but that's for you to decide.
Here's the link to the story:
http://macnightowl.com/2008/04/a-fast-look-at-bogus-apple-inc-issues/
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