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Mac Goodies for Your Holiday Wish List
Patent Applications Confirm Apple's iPhone Plans
The New God Game
Apple Expected To Have Another Big Holiday Season
Apple Sells "Refreshed" Laptop Filled With Porn To 11 Year Old Girl
InstaPundit Gets A Mac
Safari Market Share Rises to 4.03 Percent - Up 45 Percent Year Over Year
Why Are Mac Users Older Than Windows PC Users?
Me Translate Pretty One Day
Turntables, Picture Frames Outselling Zune At Amazon.com
Apple: The Conservative Party Of Tech
SeaMonkey 1.0.6 For HTML Authoring Tutorial
A royalty fee for Universal on iPods?
Will Laptops Get Out-Evolved?
The Mac Night Owl: Let's Not Get the Wrong Idea About Apple
The Tech Night Owl Newsletter: Parallels Desktop Becomes More Cohesive
The Tech Night Owl: Superman and More Superman
This Week's Tech Night Owl Radio Update
Mac Goodies for Your Holiday Wish List
The Appeal-Democrat's Kiarash Zarezadeh reports:
Many MySpace users, including me, have found the social networking site's calendar feature a bit weak. Yahoo and Google have their own versions, which triumph where MySpace fails. I use Yahoo's because it easily syncs with Microsoft Outlook on my home PC, which in turn syncs easily with my Nokia 6682 smartphone.....
Macintosh users have always argued that their system is more stable, user-friendly and attractive. PC users have always been able to counter that their system is compatible with more software, particularly freeware.
Mac fans, life just got easier.
Dozens of free software titles for Macbooks, mostly utilities, are listed at MacBookFreeware.
You can check it out at:
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/54496.html
Patent Applications Confirm Apple's iPhone Plans
ECT News Network's Jennifer LeClaire reports:
Apple filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in August that seems to confirm speculation that it is planning to unveil an iPod mobile phone. The application was disclosed Thursday, and describes a device that combines a music player with a mobile phone.
Apple has built a veritable iPod empire that just keeps getting bigger. Now, there is a paper trail that reveals Apple's intent.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/54528.html
The New God Game
BusinessWeek's Troy Lyndon reports:
The Passion of the Christ woke up America and the world that Christians in the USA, an estimated 90 million, actually want high quality entertainment that appeals to their core beliefs. The music industry discovered this more than a decade ago. Inspirational music represents more than 10% of all music sales. So, finally, a quality video game arrives on the scene—Left Behind: Eternal Forces, based upon an interpretation of Revelation, in which God comes and takes all believers to heaven. Will the game be successful? Time will tell.
Interestingly, each of the main game publishing companies, EA, THQ, Activision, and Vivendi, all have high level executives who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are waiting with great anticipation to see if Christian video games will be successful. Unlike 20 years ago, most of them now have children and a strong faith calling them to moral accountability, which was not a part of their lives back when the industry was less mature.
These days, identifying yourself as a Christian within game circles, usually conjures up either some overly religious zealot or a hypocrite, or some other vulgar word in the mind of an unbeliever. For this reason, many believers within the game industry don't make it a point to identify themselves as "born again." This soon will change as quality Christian games make a new genre for themselves in the industry.
For the full report click here.
Apple Expected To Have Another Big Holiday Season
Mercury News's Troy Wolverton says:
There are a lot of reasons to think the holidays won't be so happy for Apple Computer this year.
With a cooling economy, slowing home sales and rising interest rates, some analysts question consumers' appetite for spending this year. That could be bad news for a company that typically charges a premium for its products.
Meanwhile Apple will be fighting for a share of consumer's wallets along with expensive products such as high-definition televisions and much-anticipated ones such as Sony's PlayStation 3. At the same time, it is fending off aggressive challengers like Microsoft, particularly in the music player market its iPods have dominated. Adding to its risks, it made few changes to its iPods this year.
With more than 70 percent of that market, if anyone's going to lose share, Apple would be the obvious choice.
Or maybe not.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/16144026.htm?source=rss
Apple Sells "Refreshed" Laptop Filled With Porn To 11 Year Old Girl
consumerist.com reports:
An Apple customer was shocked, shocked, when he bought a Macbook from the London Apple Store for his 11-year old daughter, and the desktop was full of pornographic JPGs.
For the full report click here.
InstaPundit Gets A Mac
Instapundit.com's Glenn Reynolds says:
I used to be bi-curious, but now I've just gone all the way to becoming "bi," as I'm now in possession of this entree to the Mac world. So far it seems pretty cool, although every time I try to post in movable type I get a popup warning that it says I can disable by setting "safari_warning='false'" -- but I can't figure out how to do that.
UPDATE: Solved that problem -- by switching to Firefox!
For the full commentary visit here:
http://instapundit.com/archives2/2006/11/post_705.php
Safari Market Share Rises to 4.03 Percent - Up 45 Percent Year Over Year
switchtoamac reports:
According to data collected by Market Share, Apple Computer's Safari Web browser continues to gain market share as its use continues to rise. Safari continues to rank as third most used browser trailing only Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.
In November 2005, Safari's market share as measured by Market Share (Net Applications) was 2.78 percent. In November 2006, Safari's market share comes in at 4.03 percent. To view Safari's growth over the past year, click here. The rise from 2.78 to 4.03 represents a year-over-year growth of 45 percent (rounded to the nearest whole percent, actual rise is 44.96 percent) for the month of November.
For the full report click here.
Why Are Mac Users Older Than Windows PC Users?
Mac360's Carol Mary Miller says:
A recent survey says about half of all Mac users are 55 or older. That's double the share of the average home Windows PC user.
Are Mac users older than Windows users? Or, wiser? Or, both?
Technology researcher MetaFacts says over 46-percent of Mac users are 55 years old or older.
Forgive me for doubting the science of numbers, but that number just seems, well, old.
For the full commentary click here.
Me Translate Pretty One Day
Wired's Evan Ratliff reports:
Spanish to English? French to Russian? Computers haven't been up to the task. But a New York firm with an ingenious algorithm and a really big dictionary is finally cracking the code....
Language translation is a tricky problem, not only for a piece of software but also for the human mind. A single word in one language, for example, may map into three or more in another. ...
Then there are the dramatic differences in grammar and structure across languages. Arabic, for example, uses very little punctuation compared with English; Chinese contains no conjugations or plurals. For human translators, these problems are most often resolved through context or personal experience. There's no rule that says "between a rock and a hard place" isn't literal. We just know.
Machine translation is even trickier... Perhaps no technological endeavor has been more defined by its failures than the attempts over the last 60 years to use computers to convert one language into another.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/translate.html
Turntables, Picture Frames Outselling Zune At Amazon.com
Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) reports:
Microsoft Corp.'s Zune digital music device ranked No. 58 on the list of Amazon.com's best-selling electronic devices on Thursday, trailing such devices such as record turntables and a digital picture frame.
For the full report visit here:
http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2006/11/27/daily30.html
Apple: The Conservative Party Of Tech
The Register's Chris Williams says:
Despite its carefully spun marketing conceit that it's the tech brand of choice of the young and groovy, Apple's strongest market is among pensioners according to research. Almost half of Apple's base is 55 and over, said analysts at MetaFacts. That's almost double the proportion of older users who bat for the IBM-compatible team.
But how can Apple avoid future Macworld Conferences looking like the conservative Party Conference, roadblocked with shuffling retired colonels and anti-dancing campaigners named Edna?
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/01/apple_4_oaps/
SeaMonkey 1.0.6 For HTML Authoring Tutorial
ATPM's Miraz Jordan has posted a tutorial on using SeaMonkey's Web authoring module:
A couple of issues ago, I looked at Nvu and considered it a likely candidate for an application that can allow ordinary users to create Web sites that meet at least a bare minimum of accessibility requirements.
This month, I looked at SeaMonkey, though with a little hesitation, as it is a cousin of Nvu. In times past, the Netscape browser, which included the Composer component for making Web pages, turned into the Mozilla Project. In turn, the Mozilla Project has brought several Web-related pieces of software to the public: Firefox and Thunderbird are well-known; SeaMonkey is another.
Both SeaMonkey and Nvu were based on the Mozilla Composer code base, but they have been developed separately. They have a lot in common, but it turns out they aren't quite identical.
You can check it out at:
http://www.atpm.com/12.12/web-accessibility.shtml
A royalty fee for Universal on iPods?
ITWire's Stan Beer says:
Universal Music boss Doug Morris may be grinning from ear to ear on the royalty deal his company has struck with Microsoft on the sale of Zune players. However, if as suggested in a Reuters report he expects to do a similar deal with Apple on the sale of iPods, he must be dreaming.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/7652/1023/
Will Laptops Get Out-Evolved?
networkcomputing.com's Peter Rysavy says:
Today's smartphones are at the earliest stages of a computing-paradigm shift that may push aside laptops as a must-have device for mobile employees. With advances in computing power and storage, as well as high-speed wireless networks, it should be possible by the end of this decade to have a small handheld device that can run most of the applications you need and that has constant broadband connectivity....
It doesn't take much effort to extrapolate from what's available today to realize the huge effect that the mobile phone is going to have on the entire computer industry. Are you ready to go?
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196600136
The Mac Night Owl: Let's Not Get the Wrong Idea About Apple
From time to time, I read an article that offers to show what Apple is doing wrong. While I think the company makes its share of mistakes, sometimes what strikes these people as wrong is perfectly normal, or at least something to be expected from a company the size of Apple.
Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://www.macnightowl.com/2006/12/01/lets-not-get-the-wrong-idea-about-apple/
Notes: You can also access our RSS newsletter feed, available at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/rss
Or our Atom newsletter feed at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/atom
The Tech Night Owl Newsletter: Parallels Desktop Becomes More Cohesive
It's fair to say that you can almost become dizzy trying to track the various and sundry changes with Parallels Desktop, the premier Windows emulation environment on the Mac these days. It all began last April, almost before the ink had dried on printed stories about the first public beta of Apple1s Boot Camp.
Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/2006/12/04/newsletter-issue-366/#cohesive
Notes: You can also access our RSS newsletter feed, available at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/rss
Or our Atom newsletter feed at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/atom
The Tech Night Owl: Superman and More Superman
Yes, it1s true that Superman Returns wasn't the fabulous success Time Warner banked on, but it did well enough to green light a sequel, some three years hence. In the meantime, you'll be surfeited with Superman with the release of multiple DVDs going back to the 1940s.
Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/2006/12/04/newsletter-issue-366/#superman
Notes: You can also access our new RSS newsletter feed, available at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/rss
Or our new Atom newsletter feed at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/atom
This Week's Tech Night Owl Radio Update
Headlong into the holiday season, I spent a large portion of last week1s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE talking about some of the best holiday gear. First up was Bob 'Dr. Mac" LeVitus, who is busy choosing from a matte or glossy screen for his new MacBook Pro. A more varied menu of gadgets for the holidays came from, of course, Steve "Mr. Gadget" Kruschen.
Here's the URL for this week's update on the show:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/2006/12/04/newsletter-issue-366/#update
Notes: You can also access our new RSS newsletter feed, available at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/rss
Or our Atom newsletter feed at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/newsletter/atom
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Charles W. Moore
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