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Does MacBook Air Hit The Sweet Spot Between Laptop Power And iPad Portability? - The Book Mystique
Emergence of Ultrabooks Driving BYOD Trend In The Enterprise
Worldwide PC Shipments in Fourth Quarter of 2011 Declined 1.4 Percent; Year-End Shipments Increased 0.5 Percent - Gartner
Adobe Carousel Updated And Renamed Adobe Revel
ElGato Thunderbolt SSD Portable Drive
LaCie Announces Latest High-Speed Storage Solutions Featuring Thunderbolt Technology
Scent Of Apple In The Air At CES
Consumer Electronics Websites: Microsoft is Most Visited, but has Longest Time Spent - Neilsen
LionScrollbars 0.2.1 - Adjust Scrollbar Behavior In Specific Applications
Dolly Drive, Online Mac Backup, Brings Latest Features To iLounge at CES
Lemke Software Releases GraphicConverter 7.6 for Mac OS X
Does MacBook Air Hit The Sweet Spot Between Laptop Power And iPad Portability? - The Book Mystique
In his latest 'Book Mystique column on MacPrices.net, Charles Moore says:
For me, a computer is primarily a writing and communications tool, and when I bought my iPad 2 last June I had hoped that it would be a usable substitute for a laptop, at least for relatively light-duty computing tasks. I was more curious than under any illusion. The dominant school of thought was that the iPad is an excellent content consumption device, but a content creation tool not so much. However, I wanted to find out for myself.
Now, with more than half a year s iPadding under my belt, I have, and the preponderance of critical opinion was right. The Pad is great for Web surfing, music listening and so forth, tolerable for email, but mediocre to miserable for the sort of work I mostly do with computers. Definitely not a comprehensive laptop substitute answer for me, but I have been seduced by the easy tote-ability enabling me to do stuff virtually anywhere in the house, or for that matter out of it where there s WiFI access. I would find that tough to give up. The iPad has roped me in at least that far.
Consequently, I was interested to read in a review of the MacBook Air by BusinessInsider's Dylan Love last week, relating his impressions after using his Core i MacBook Air for about four and a half months, noting that he carries it around all day as he used to do with the iPad but doesn't any more, preferring to sacrifice a little more room in his carry bag in order to have a fully capable computer available wherever he happens to be, with a more comfortable and tactile keyboard, a larger screen, full access to parts of the Internet that aren t immediately there for the iPad, and so forth.
To read more, click here.
http://bit.ly/AkFInx
Emergence of Ultrabooks Driving BYOD Trend In The Enterprise
"I believe that within the next couple of years ultrabooks will drive the current "BYOD" trends that are currently pervasive in smartphones which will result in another push towards the end of company-provided PCs," says David Danto, Principal Consultant for Dimension Data. "This category, plus virtualization and the Cloud, will get the Fortune 1000 companies out of the PC buying business, which will likely have an effect on the large PC manufacturers, as one could easily anticipate."
"I think its questionable whether the new content and features being shown at CES will be enough to spur the huge growth in consumer sales and the economy that most manufacturers are hoping for," Mr. Danto, continues. "This could result in the failure of some of the big consumer box houses and a complete change in the paradigm of consumer electronics buying. Anyone not buying their gear and components on the Internet may be spending too much, since superior service at the big box houses are thing of the past. We seem to be at an inflection point where Internet sales could potentially overtake them within the next 18-24 months."
Dimension Data Website:
http://www.dimensiondata.com/Pages/Home.aspx
Worldwide PC Shipments in Fourth Quarter of 2011 Declined 1.4 Percent; Year-End Shipments Increased 0.5 Percent - Gartner
After two quarters of positive growth, worldwide PC shipments totaled 92.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 1.4 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2010, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. These figures were in line with Gartner's earlier forecast of a 1 percent decline for the fourth quarter of 2011. Apple enjoyed the strongest growth among the top five vendors.
"Continuously low consumer PC demand resulted in weak holiday PC shipments," says Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "While economic uncertainty in Western Europe had an effect on consumer PC shipments, expectations of a healthier economic outlook in North America could not stimulate consumer PC demand in that region. The healthy professional PC market as well as growth in emerging markets could not compensate for the weaknesses in mature markets, with overall growth still negative."
Hard-disk drive (HDD) shortages triggered by the October 2011 floods in Thailand had a limited impact on fourth-quarter PC shipments and prices. However, Gartner analysts say a major impact will be felt, expected to materialize in the first half of 2012, and potentially continue throughout 2012. These shortages will temporarily lower PC shipment growth during 2012.
"Ultrabooks were quietly introduced into the market during the 4Q11 holiday season," Ms. Kitagawa notes. "Ultrabooks didn't seem to draw consumers' attention. Consumers had very little understanding and awareness of ultrabooks, and only a small group of consumers was willing to pay the price premium for such models. However, as has been seen this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) show, 2012 is a big debut stage for ultrabooks."
HP retained its No. 1 position in the fourth quarter of 2011, despite a shipment decline of 16.2 percent year over year (see Table 1). While the company's new CEO, Meg Whitman, cleared up some confusion surrounding its PC business, its 4Q11 results were affected by the noise around this issue. HP also had to battle against aggressive pricing from competitors and deal with weak consumer PC demand in the holiday season.
Lenovo experienced the strongest growth among the top five vendors, as its PC shipments grew 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, and it further cemented its place as the No. 2 vendor in global PC shipments. The companys growth was attributed to its aggressive pricing in both the professional and consumer markets.
Dell had a good quarter with shipment growth in most regions. While the consumer market remained a weak point, Dell enjoyed stable growth in the professional sector, driven by upgrades to Windows 7. Asia/Pacific continued to be the major growth market for Dell, as it achieved 30 percent growth in the region. Asus stayed in the No. 5 position despite generally weak consumer sales. Asuss shift from mini-notebooks to regular notebooks was successful, as close to 80 percent of Asus mobile PCs shipments were regular notebooks in the fourth quarter of 2011.
In the U.S., PC shipments totaled 17.9 million units, a 5.9 percent decline compared with the same quarter last year (see Table 2). U.S. holiday sales were not all that exciting for PC vendors. As expected, consumers attention was diverted toward other product categories, especially smartphones and media tablets. All-in-one (AIO) desktop PCs drew consumers attention during the holiday season. The main attractions were large screen sizes and high-definition viewing capability.
HP maintained the No. 1 position in the U.S. PC market in the fourth quarter of 2011, but Dell gained ground as HP lost substantial market share in the quarter.
Apple enjoyed the strongest growth among the top five vendors. Lenovo's U.S. PC shipments grew 40 percent year-over-year, but its shipment volume was not enough to squeeze into the top five ranking (it was in the sixth position).
PC shipments in EMEA totaled 28.9 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 9.6 percent decline from the same period in 2010. The EMEA PC market experienced its fourth consecutive quarter of decline, resulting in year-end 2011 shipments decreasing 7.2 percent from 2010. Western Europe saw weak consumer growth, as an uneasy economic environment squeezed consumer spending on PCs.
In Asia/Pacific, PC shipments reached 30.4 million units, an 8.5 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2010. The market performance was below Gartners anticipated growth of 10.6 percent. The preliminary findings show weaker shipment growth in China, India and Thailand.
The PC market in Latin America grew 11.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, as shipments reached 9.3 million units. Because whitebox PC vendors make up a large portion of Latin Americas PC market, last quarter Gartner expected Thailands HDD shortage to moderately affect growth in Latin America in the near term. Thus far, anecdotal evidence indicates that many local vendors had quickly ordered sufficient inventory to exit the fourth quarter unaffected.
PC shipments in Japan declined 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, as shipments totaled 3.9 million units. This was better than Gartners earlier projection of an 8 percent decline. The professional market showed a high double-digit decline, while the consumer market saw mid-single-digit growth.
For the year, worldwide PC shipments totaled 352.8 million units in 2011, a 0.5 percent increase from 2010 (see Table 3). A weak consumer PC market, particularly in mature markets, was a major contributor to this stagnation, despite good growth in the professional market. Emerging markets grew steadily, driven by low initial PC penetration.
Among the top five PC vendors, Lenovo took over the No. 2 spot from Dell. Lenovo continued to gain market share via aggressive pricing and acquisitions, namely of NEC and Medion. Asus climbed from sixth to fifth, replacing Toshiba.
These results are preliminary. Final statistics will be available soon to clients of Gartner's PC Quarterly Statistics Worldwide by Region program. This program offers a comprehensive and timely picture of the worldwide PC market, allowing product planning, distribution, marketing and sales organizations to keep abreast of key issues and their future implications around the globe. Additional research can be found on Gartner's Computing Hardware section on Gartner's web site at:
http://bit.ly/xL1Hxb
Adobe Carousel Updated And Renamed Adobe Revel
Adobe Systems Incorporated's newly rechristened Adobe Revel (formerly Adobe Carousel) easily brings all your photos together in a single photo library you can access from your iPad, iPhone, and Mac. No storage issues or manual syncing hassles.
Not only can you enjoy your photos anywhere you are, you can also make them look terrific using the same powerful photo-processing technology that's in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software. And you can easily create the ultimate family photo hub by sharing a photo library with family members and inviting them to contribute shots and weigh in on favorites.
To enable the seamless, multi-device experience on all of your iPads, iPhones, and Macs, Adobe Revel requires an active subscription. Simply purchase your subscription from your iPad or iPhone. You can start with a 30-day complimentary subscription Subscriptions sell for the introductory price of US$5.99 a month or US$59.99 per year. Offer expires January 31, 2012. A single subscription lets you use Revel in virtually the same ways on all your iPads, iPhones, and Macs. Each Adobe Revel subscription comes with five photo carousels. You can import as many photos as you want into each photo carousel, and you can share each photo carousel with up to five other people. In order to use Adobe Revel, you must also sign up for an Adobe ID. Your Adobe ID is what connects all your devices to your Adobe Revel photo library.
To import photos in your devices camera roll, you need to allow access to Location Services on your device.
Revel Features:
• Add photos to Adobe Revel on your iPad, iPhone, or Mac, and youll instantly have access to them in Revel on your other iPad, iPhone, and Mac devices.
• Stylish Looks.
• Make manual adjustments to white-balance, exposure, contrast, clarity, vibrance, and more.
• Use preset Looks to change the look and feel of your photos
• Crop, rotate, and flip photos.
• Experiment endlessly knowing Adobe Revel always preserves your original photo.
• Easily create a family photo hub. Just invite family members to add photos to your library via their own Adobe Revel apps, and let them flag their favorites.
• Use familiar multitouch gestures to browse thousands of photos or quickly find and fill the screen with one great shot.
• Send your photos straight from Revel to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr.
• Snap new photos right from Revel on your iPhone or iPad, and they'll instantly appear in your photo library on all your devices.
• Export photos to your hard drive so you can use other apps and services to create photo books and keepsakes.
• Import, edit, and share all your JPEGs, the most common file format for photos.
• Delete a photo from Adobe Revel to delete it everywhere, forever. But if you delete a photo from the hard drive on your Mac or the camera roll on your iDevice, Adobe Revel will restore the file to your photo library.
• There's no limit to how many photos you can import, and there's no limit on the resolution or size of individual photos as long as they are JPEGS.
• View your photos full-screen in either landscape or portrait mode on your mobile device.
• Photos are grouped by date which makes it easy to find and view the photos you want. See all the details by filling the screen with a single photo using Loupe view.
• Works over WiFi and 3G.
New in Version 1.1
• Adobe Carousel is now called Adobe Revel
• Support for Landscape orientation in Loupe view on the iPhone
• Automatically import photos from the Camera Roll on your iPhone and iPad
• Flickr is now supported as a sharing destination
• Store Originals has been renamed Keep All Originals
• Bug fixes
System Requirements Mac:
• Mac OS X 10.7 or later
• 64-bit processor
System Requirements for iOS:
• Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad
• Requires iOS 4.2 or later
For more information, visit:
http://www.adobe.com/products/revel.html
Mac App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-revel/id455068834
iOS App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-revel/id455066445
ElGato Thunderbolt SSD Portable Drive
Before Elgato started working on what became the most advanced TV and video solutions for the Mac, they were part of the revolution of innovative storage technology. The vast majority of FireWire drives contained Elgato software, and even early flash-based products were powered by Elgato.
Over a decade later, ElGato's developers were thrilled when Thunderbolt was introduced. So they decided to go back to their roots and create what they had always been longing for: a truly portable, ultra-fast external drive.
The Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is claimed ro be the fastest single-drive storage solution for your Mac. Using a Solid State Drive (SSD), it dramatically outperforms state-of-the-art portable FireWire or USB drives.
Truly portable
While you're on the go, less is more. That's why the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is engineered to draw power directly through the Thunderbolt port, without needing a separate power supply. This way, your data is always there with you, even when youre not near a power source.
Due to the absence of moving, mechanical parts, solid state drives are far less prone to accidental damage than traditional hard drives. The Elgato Thunderbolt SSD also uses a rock-solid metal enclosure, guaranteeing not only good looks, but also added protection for your valuable data.
Quieter Than A Whisper
The Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is designed to work without the need for a noisy fan. With its advanced enclosure and the inaudible Solid State Drive, that means youll never hear a sound, despite its constantly screaming performance.
Slated for release in February, The Elgato Thunderbolt SSD will be available in 128GB and 256GB versions with prices starting at $429.95.
For more information, visit:
http://bit.ly/An9C3B
LaCie Announces Latest High-Speed Storage Solutions Featuring Thunderbolt Technology
LaCie has announced its latest peripherals featuring Thunderbolt technology at the 2012 International CES. The new 2big Thunderbolt Series delivers speed, flexibility and capacity, while the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series allows users to connect external eSATA drives to their new Macs. This announcement follows the unprecedented success of LaCie's Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series and further asserts the company's commitment to deliver high-quality products featuring Thunderbolt technology.
"LaCie is proud to offer the widest range of storage solutions featuring Thunderbolt technology," said Erwan Girard, Professional Business Unit Manager, LaCie. "These products are some of the fastest and most flexible storage solutions on the market. They will dramatically accelerate the workflow of even the most demanding digital users."
2Big Thunderbolt Series
With speeds up to three times faster than FireWire 800, the LaCie 2big also features RAID security, hot-swappable disks, daisy chain convenience and a solid-aluminum casing. Heavy data users will appreciate capacities up to 8TB with jaw-dropping transfer rates up to 311MB/s. Daisy chaining multiple 2bigs even increases overall performance.
With the 2big, backups take a fraction of the time, letting the user back up more frequently. Videographers working in Final Cut Pro X or other professional software can even stream multiple HD video streams directly from the drive. Photographers using Lightroom or Aperture will notice significantly more responsive photo library browsing.
ESATA Hub Thunderbolt Series
The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series gives new life to existing eSATA drives with Thunderbolt innovation and backward compatibility. It connects to a late-model Mac via the Thunderbolt port and features two eSATA ports. This lets the user connect two eSATA external hard drives to the Hub and get full eSATA speeds on their new Mac. The Hub also features a second Thunderbolt port that lets the user connect other Thunderbolt peripherals. This means up to 12 eSATA drives (6x Dock, 2x eSATA links per Hub) can be connected via a single connection to a Mac with full eSATA 3Gb/s speeds.
The 2big Thunderbolt Series and eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series will be available in the first quarter of 2012. Thunderbolt cables can be purchased separately on Apple.com. For full specifications and product information, visit:
http://www.lacie.com
Product Page
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10573
Release is expected in March; prices have not been established.
Scent Of Apple In The Air At CES
MacNewsWorld's Rachelle Dragani notes that while Apple is once again sitting out the Consumer Electronics Show, likewise once again, the company's presence is palpable - its presence is felt everywhere in the Las Vegas Convention Center.
For the full report, visit here:
http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/74152.html
Consumer Electronics Websites: Microsoft is Most Visited, but has Longest Time Spent - Neilsen
Consumers are turning to a range of sources for consumer electronics information, with Microsoft leading as the most visited computer and consumer electronics brand online in September 2011.
Microsoft's websites saw nearly 94 million unique U.S. visitors, according to Nielsen's State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report. Among top brands in the category, consumers spent the most time on Apple's websites, where 68.7 million visitors averaged one hour and two minutes per person, compared to 42 minutes on Microsoft's sites. Adobe, Mozilla, and CNET rounded out the top five brands, with 24 to 28 million visitors going to their sites and spending 2 to 6 minutes each on average. CNET was the only news website among the top 5 in this category overall.
Women made up the majority of visitors to both categories of websites. More than three out of four women who were active online visited consumer electronics sites during September 2011, compared to seven out of 10 men. Women were also 7 percent more likely to visit mass merchandiser sites. Young people aged 18-34 were slightly more likely than the general population (4 percent more likely) to visit consumer electronics sites.
For additional insights on consumer electronics and media usage, download Nielsen's "State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report" here:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/mediauniverse/
Mozilla Planning To Release Enterprise Version Of Firefox
IDG News Service's Juan Carlos Perez reports that Mozilla is fixing to release a version of Firefox tailored for organizations whose IT departments manage it for their employees from a central console.
For the full report, visit here:
http://macw.us/x3PNDH
LionScrollbars 0.2.1 - Adjust Scrollbar Behavior In Specific Applications
LionScrollbars is a program that enables fine-grained control over how scrollbars are displayed in OS X Lion (10.7).
The default behavior for scrollbars in Lion only allows for three settings in System Preferences (always show, always hide, mouse-device specific); these settings apply to ALL applications. However, for some application you might find yourself wishing you could see a scrollbar (such as if you're editing text or code, etc.); with this program you can do that!
How does it work? Application preferences are stored in .plist files for each application. These preference files allow for overriding system defaults, so we write to these files for any application for which you wish to override the system default. Unfortunately in OS X Lion a sandboxing mechanism was introduced, which drastically complicates where and how preferences are handled.
New in version 0.2.1:
• Fixed embarrassing typo.
• Added credits for Japanese localization.
System Requirements:
Intel, Mac OS X 10.7 or later.
For more information, visit:
https://bitbucket.org/dainkaplan/lionscrollbars
Dolly Drive, Online Mac Backup, Brings Latest Features To iLounge at CES
Cirrus Thinking, maker of Dolly Drive cloud storage for Mac, is unveiling many of its newest consumer and business features for Mac at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week. The new features include multi-Mac backup from a single account, file-sync for online storage, a new mobile app, and a private cloud appliance with Time Machine integration.
"We're thrilled to showcase Dolly Drive's ease and breadth of cloud capabilities to the passionate Mac users and technophiles who attend CES" says Anthony Palermo, CEO of Dolly Drive. "Cloud storage is on everyone's minds and Dolly Drive does more to protect user data and give users access than any service in the market."
The company will also be offering a free MacBook and Dolly Drive subscription as part of it's "Open Up Your Mac" contest. Show attendees who come to the booth will be given a card with a unique code that they can enter into a form at Dolly Drive online. One code will be the key that opens up their new Mac.
Dolly Drive is an all-in-one subscription software and online storage service designed for Mac. In addition to providing Mac users offsite cloud storage directly through Apple's Time Machine application, and online storage to expand hard drive space, the application allows users to create a bootable clone of their Mac on an external hard drive for local disaster recovery. It works with Apple's Lion and Snow Leopard platforms. See more at Dolly Drive online or this January at CES and MacWorld.
Dolly Drive:
http://www.dollydrive.com
For more information, visit:
http://www.dollydrive.com/learn_more/
Twitter Profile:
http://twitter.com/#!/dollydrive
Lemke Software Releases GraphicConverter 7.6 for Mac OS X
Longtime Macintosh developer and publisher, Lemke Software GmbH has announced immediate availability of GraphicConverter 7.6, their image editing and conversion utility for Mac OS X. GraphicConverter is the ultimate tool for image editing, image browsing, metadata editing, slideshows, image conversion from more than 200 file formats and much more. The new version does add a highlights and shadows function, color balance and much more.
New Feature Highlights:
(*) Added shadow and highlights
(*) Added color balance
(*) Added histogram equalization
(*) Added metadata tab to slideshow preferences; fontsize, color and metadata can now be choosen
(*) Added search feature to preferences dialog
(*) Russian translation added
(*) Customized options to set rating and label with the keyboard in the browser and slideshow
(*) Cursor up/down in image does recognize user selection for natural scrolling on 10.7 or later
(*) Support for scanning from network scanners with image capture added
(*) Create alpha channel from embedded path command added
(*) sepia batch added
(*) Create alpha channel from embedded path batch added
(*) Added menu entry to show preferences file
(*) Added Xe847 (automatic) batch function
(*) Added BLP import option to mirror vertically
(*) Option to disable reopen of last windows upon launch on Lion added
Language support:
German, English, French, Danish, Sweden, Italian, Spanish, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Dutch, Catalan, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian
System Requirements:
(*) Mac OS 10.5 or later
GraphicConverter 7.6 is a free update to registered users of GraphicConverter 7.0-7.5. New users may purchase the software for $39.95 (USD) directly from their website or the Mac App Store. New users can download a free trial version from their website.
GraphicConverter 7.6:
http://www.lemkesoft.com/
Key Features:
http://www.lemkesoft.com/content/193/key-features.html
Download GraphicConverter:
http://bit.ly/r6KhaP
Purchase:
http://www.lemkesoft.com/order.html
Facebook Profile:
http://www.facebook.com/Lemkesoft
LinkedIn Profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/thorstenlemke
Twitter Profile:
http://twitter.com/#!/Lemkesoft
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