Applelinks Tech Web Reader - Thursday, July 2, 2009
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Why Bother Getting A Mac?
Apple Poised To Drop NVIDIA Chips?
Apple May Drop NVIDIA Chips In Macs Following Contract Fight
Kace Pledges End To Mac Discrimination
MacBook Air Firmware Update V1.2 Not Installing
Mac Shipments On The Rise
Apple's Mac Shipments Rebounding Sharply In Recent Weeks
Does Apple Really Have The Greenest Notebooks?
Firefox 3.5 performs at 251% the speed of 3.0, At Least On Windows - Report
Bill Taylor of Harvard Business School says:
Steve Jobs is back in the headlines, which got me thinking about this unique leader's legacy - and what, if anything, the rest of us can learn from how Jobs does his job. Whoever uttered the words, "trust the art, not the artist" must have had Steve Jobs in mind.....
How many corporate executives can make a legitimate claim to have reshaped not just one industry but four: computing (the Mac), music (the iPod), mobile communications (the iPhone), and movies (Pixar). And how many CEOs can make the legitimate claim that they achieved their wealth and power by making tens of millions of people so unbelievably happy that they worship the company and its products with near-religious devotion?....
....In terms of the impact his products have had on the world, Steve Jobs represents the face of business at its best. And yet, in terms of his approach to leadership, Jobs represents the face of business - well, if not at its worst, then certainly not as something worth emulating.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/taylor/2009/06/decoding_steve_jobs_trust_the.html
Why Bother Getting A Mac?
The New Zealand Herald's Mark Webster comments:
As TechRadar in Britain puts it, "Macs are beautifully designed and engineered, not simply from an aesthetic perspective but, more importantly for many, in usability terms too. The operating system is generally fast, elegant and - thanks to its Unix pedigree - secure and incredibly powerful as well."
[Many] think they're paying too much for products with Apple badges on them.... But despite any real or perceived price differentiation, Macs still score very well on reliability....
Once someone comes up with the money, they tend to keep sending it Apple's way. Strangely, even a search on Microsoft's new search engine Bing tells you to use a Mac if you type in "should I use a Mac or a PC?"...
Apple also polled best in New Zealand for after sales service... 99 per cent of NZ Apple desktop computer owners reported 'satisfaction' with their Macs.... 15.91 per cent of the respondents in NZ owned (or used) Macs.... And all but 1 per cent of them would buy Macs again.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/nb2xkm
Apple Poised To Drop NVIDIA Chips?
Electronista reports that Apple and NVIDIA may be engaged in a fierce dispute that could exclude NVIDIA graphics chips from future Macs, much of inter-corporate dispute centering on the overheating issue that caused widespread failures in the GeForce 8400M and 8600M mobile graphics chips that virtually guarantee video video corruption or shutdown problems in two entire previous generations of 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pro models, with Apple having been obliged to extend MacBook Pro warranties for up to three years and possibly skeptical of NVIDIA's assurances that newer models aren't at risk of the same problem.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/07/01/apple.may.drop.nvidia/
Apple May Drop NVIDIA Chips In Macs Following Contract Fight
Appleinsider's Aidan Malley also reports that the rumored Apple - NVIDIA spat could see some GeForce chipsets excluded from future Mac models, and that negotiations between Apple and NVIDIA are now "extremely bitter," although the rift wouldn't result in an immediate breakup since the fact that NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and 9600M GT chipsets are used in nearly all newer Mac models, whose product cycles still have a long time to run, but could result in nearer-term updates moving to non-NVIDIA chipsets, possibly beginning with iMacs and MacBooks based on Intel's forthcoming Nehalem processor architecture
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/nlm7v6
Kace Pledges End To Mac Discrimination
The Register's Gavin Clarke reports:
Desktop management specialist Kace is getting serious about Mac management, as Apple's platform makes headway in the business world.
On Tuesday, Kace released the latest version of its Kbox appliances that it said ends discrimination against Macs in businesses dominated by PCs running Microsoft's Windows.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/01/kace_mac_descrimination/
MacBook Air Firmware Update V1.2 Not Installing
MacFixIt reports:
A few MacBook Air users have noticed the recently released update for these computers either will not install on their systems or will not show up in the Software Update panel.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20090701123945387
Mac Shipments On The Rise
Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports that according to Morgan Stanley's Kathryn Huberty, Apple is the computer maker with the "most upside" as the PC market begins to stabilize after the dismal first quarter of 2009, noting that even "before the new Macbook Pros launched Apple began to outperform the broader commercial PC segment = with commercial Mac shipments up 25% [month over month] in May versus market growth of just 1%," and the mid-2009 MacBook Pro upgrades providing a further "catalyst for growth," her forecast for Mac sales in calendar Q2 (Apple's fiscal Q3) increasing to 2.5 million units, up from 2.4 million.
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/lxam6j
Apple's Mac Shipments Rebounding Sharply In Recent Weeks
Appleinsider's Slash Lane reports:
An aggressive back-to-school promotion and a more affordably-priced overhaul to Apple's MacBook Pro notebook line are boosting Apple's personal computer shipments to levels not seen since last October, shortly before the economic climate caught up with the Mac maker in earnest.
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/kvsdsm
Does Apple Really Have The Greenest Notebooks?
InfoWorld says that Apple and other PC makers are overdoing it when they flash their EPEAT Gold to prove they're green, noting that last month Apple registered 10 MacBooks in the EPEAT registry - all Gold rated, giving Apple a total of 11 Gold-rated MacBooks claiming that the MacBook line is "the world's greenest family of notebooks."
InfoWorld decided to go straight to the source: the EPEAT registry, discovering some interesting findings that arguably contradict Apple's claim.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/green-it/does-apple-really-have-greenest-notebooks-729
Firefox 3.5 performs at 251% the speed of 3.0, At Least On Windows - Report
"Microsoft says Web browser performance enhancements should be something you can see. If you can't see this, you're blind," comments BetsNews's Scott M. Fulton, II, reporting that while it had been suggested that Firefox 3.5 RC3 would be bit-for-bit identical with the final 3.5, so the scores should come out the same. the final 3.5 build actually demonstrates some big gains after all, at least in the Windows version and on average with new and welcome speed gains in the latest Opera 10 Beta, Web browsers run 20% faster in Windows 7 RC than in Vista SP2, with Betanews estimating, that Firefox version 3.5 final runs at 253.8% the speed of version 3.0.11 in Windows XP SP3, 246.5% the older version's speed in Vista SP2, and 254.6% the speed in Windows 7 RC. That averages out to about 251% the older version's performance across the board.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.betanews.com/article/1246470925/comment/new/reply_to/1932206
