Applelinks.com Moore’s Tech Web Reader - Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Moore’s Tech Web Reader - Tuesday, December 26, 2006

By Charles W. Moore Tuesday, December 26, 2006.
Filed under: News � Tech-Industry �

1792

Planned Home PC Purchases Surge, Apple Closes On HP
More PC buyers will be going Mac in 2007
Opinion: Snub Vista For Apple
Macintosh Year-End Bits and Pieces
Top 10 Apple Core Stories of 2006
VMware opens Mac virtual machine tech to public
iPod shuffle top seller on Amazon electronics
Why the Apple Phone Will Fail, And Fail Badly
New Report Spells Trouble For Music Industry, Not Apple
Intel-based iMac: What to do if your computer won't turn on
PC Mag: Making the Switch from PC to Mac
ExtremeTech: Sun's Looking Glass 3D Desktop Released
eWEEK: Linux Desktop 2006: Better Than Ever
PC Mag: Does Vista Matter?
PC Mag: Vista Needs a New Machine
The Tech Night Owl: Before You Return that Gadget
The Tech Night Owl Newsletter: The Night Owl’s Ongoing Email Odyssey
This Week's Tech Night Owl Radio Update

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Planned Home PC Purchases Surge, Apple Closes On HP

InformationWeek's Gregg Keizer reports:

Although Dell (at 43%) and Hewlett-Packard (13%) were voted the top two brands among likely buyers in December, Apple's 12% was the highest since IBD began tracking it in mid-2003.

Consumer PC purchase intent is at the highest level since July, according to a monthly index tracked by Investor's Business Daily, and one of the big beneficiaries in the next six month will be Apple Computer.

The IBD/TIPP Home Computer Purchase Outlook index, which uses a 0-100 scoring system to measure buyer intent, jumped 17% to 23 in December from November. Only July's 23.4 had a higher mark in the last three years, Investor's Business Daily said.

For the full report click here.

More PC buyers will be going Mac in 2007

Ars Technica's Charles Jade says:

2006 has seen a number of analysts predicting substantially increased Mac sales, and at least one six-figure prognosticator has suggested Apple Computer may sell as as many as 9 million Macs in 2007. Reasons for this remarkable turnaround include Intel CPUs, the iPod Halo Effect, and Boot Camp. While such theories may seem perfectly rational to Mac users, it's one thing to theorize and quite another to have hard numbers.

While Patrick Seitz at Investor's Business Daily may not have those numbers yet, he does report on the next best thing, a survey of likely intent. The IBD/TIPP Home Computer Purchase Outlook index measured consumer intent to purchase a PC in the next six months on a scale of 0 to 100, and from November to December that number jumped six points, from 17 to 23 percent. Brand interest among US consumers was highest with Dell at 47 percent, followed by HP at 13 percent.

But Apple was a close third with 12% of likely buyers. That's the highest brand preference rating for Apple that the IBD/TIPP poll has recorded since TechnoMetrica began tracking the brand in July 2003.

For the full commentary visit here:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/12/23/6391

Opinion: Snub Vista For Apple

PC Advisor's Yuval Kossovsky says:

Looking back, 2006 has been a great year for Apple. Wall Street continues to be enamoured with all things Apple, the company's laptop market share is up to 10 percent, and the media distribution business has changed forever â€“ with iTV arriving in the US in the new year.

I could go on about touch-screen video iPods, market share, new models, the completion of the Intel transition, the rumoured mobile phones and more. The only prediction I will make is that Apple's iChatAV video communications tool will break out to more mainstream use this coming year, and that Apple will embed it in a 3G mobile phone. IChatAV will be the killer app for mobile operators seeking to increase average revenues per user via data services.

Having got that bit of speculation out of the way, I want to focus on something concrete. I think the biggest news for Apple in 2007 will be Windows Vista. More to the point, for businesses managing the risk of migration to Vista, I think the argument can be made that migrating to Mac OS X as a primary operating system instead. Here's why......

You can check it out at:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=7937

Macintosh Year-End Bits and Pieces

/itmanagement.earthweb.com's John Welch says:

Greetings, Apple users. Here's a small collection of items for your perusal:

iPhone Craziness

DiskWarrior Disk Repair Utility

Kerio Mail Server

Macworld Expo in January

As a bit of a plug, I'll be part of two sessions at Macworld Expo in January 2007.

For the full report visit here:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/appleent/article.php/3650516

Top 10 Apple Core Stories of 2006

ZDNet blogger Jason D. O'Grady says:

It's almost the end of the year so I thought that it would be a good time to recap your favorite stories from The Apple Core in 2006.

10. Apple partners with Nike on iPod for runners

9. Sony rips off MacBook design

8. Silent recall on MacBook Pro batteries

7. MacBook Pro Photoshop benchmarks

6. More details on Macworld plasmas and Mac mini

5. MacBook Pro's crazy new LEDs

4. Report: Islamic site finds Apple store offensive

3. Apple vs. Me

2. Top 10 things Apple could announce at Macworld Expo

1. Exclusive: MacBook Pro unboxing pics

You can check it out at:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=358

VMware opens Mac virtual machine tech to public

The Register's Tony Smith reports:

Virtualisation software specialist VMware has posted a pre-release version of 'Fusion', the Mac version of its desktop virtualisation software. The public availability of the beta release was accompanied by VMware competitor Parallels' posting of a update to its own Mac virtualisation tool.

VMware announced Fusion in August this year. At the time, it said it would offer a public beta "later in the year".

Fusion runs on any Intel-based Mac to run other x86 operating systems...

For the full report visit here:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/12/22/vmware_opens_mac_vm/

iPod shuffle top seller on Amazon electronics

Ars Technica's Jeff Smykil reports:

Digital music players are a dime a dozen. It seems that these days everyone and their brother is manufacturing at least a few models. The saturated market is ripe with competition. That is why I was somewhat surprised to find that of all the MP3 players on the market, the second generation iPod shuffle is the number one best seller on Amazon.com's electronics sales chart.

For the full report visit here:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/12/21/6377

Why the Apple Phone Will Fail, And Fail Badly

The Register's Bill Ray says:

The hype is reaching fever-pitch, and the odds are still stacked that Apple will announce a device combining the functionality of an iPod and a mobile phone in January next year, but whether such a device will actually sell is another question.

There seems little question that an Apple phone product will be launched in 2007, and that it will work with the iTunes service and have a very pretty industrial design and a smooth interface. Strapping an iPod to a mobile phone is not a great technical challenge, which makes it all the more remarkable that Motorola did it so badly with their ROKR handset. Maintaining the features which made the iPod so popular in a mobile phone will be much more of a challenge.

For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.theregister.com/2006/12/23/iphone_will_fail/

New Report Spells Trouble For Music Industry, Not Apple

USA Today's Andrew Kantor reports:

Sales of digital music are collapsing! Apple's iTunes sales are down 65%! We'll be back to vinyl records in a matter of weeks!

The source of that hubbub earlier this month? A report from Forrester Research, discussing sales of music through Apple's iTunes store, that supposedly said iTunes was in big trouble — and with it the whole legal-download industry.

One problem: It didn't really say that. The end isn't nigh for iTunes. Yet that doesn't mean the report doesn't bode poorly for the music industry in general.

For the full commentary visit here.

Intel-based iMac: What to do if your computer won't turn on

A new Apple Knowledge Base article says:

There are some simple troubleshooting steps you should try if your iMac (Early 2006), iMac (Mid 2006), or iMac (Late 2006)—the Intel-based iMacs—won't turn on. Use these steps if:

Your Intel-based iMac computer's display has no picture after you turn it on.

You don't hear any fan or hard disk activity sounds after you turn the computer on.

The computer doesn't seem to have any power when you try to turn it on.

For solutions, visit:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303138

PC Mag: Making the Switch from PC to Mac

"When Apple switched to Intel processors, I switched to a Mac. It was that simple. And judging by Apple's latest financial report, millions of you are coming with me: Mac sales have increased 30 percent since last year. But Apple is more than just the Coca-Cola of computing: The company builds solid machines that are capable of handling office work and, in my opinion, are vastly superior to Windows machines when it comes to multimedia editing."

To read more, go to:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2072352,00.asp

ExtremeTech: Sun's Looking Glass 3D Desktop Released

"Sun Microsystems this week released "Looking Glass," a 3D desktop interface that provides an OS-neutral version of some of the elements found in OS X and Microsoft's newly-released Vista OS.

Looking Glass, which was first shown off in 2003 and released as an open-source project in 2004, allows users to run a Java-based desktop environment on top of Windows, or on Linux or Solaris. The software allows certain applications to be run in a "2.5D" environment, allowing them to be rotated in 3D space to maximize the available desktop space."

To read more, go to:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2076206,00.asp

eWEEK: Linux Desktop 2006: Better Than Ever

Opinion: The Linux desktop had its best year ever and things are going to get even better in 2007.

To read more, go to:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2076279,00.asp

PC Mag: Does Vista Matter?

"Nearly a dozen years ago, Microsoft orchestrated the biggest product launch the computer industry has ever known when it shipped Windows 95 and Office 95. The software was long awaited and accompanied by so much hype that you would have thought the arrival of these two products was a world-altering event.

The launch was successful. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 had made Windows a viable operating environment, but it wasn't until Windows 95 that DOS really disappeared and everyone was running a graphical user interface. And Office 95 turned a collection of programs into a real suite. Many capabilities that we take for granted today, such as multitasking, came into their own with these releases."

To read more, go to:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2072255,00.asp

PC Mag: Vista Needs a New Machine

"Don't upgrade to Vista-buy A new computer instead. To get all the performance that Vista has to offer, chances are somewhere between good and excellent that the system now on your desk isn't going to deliver.

You've heard about the obvious advantages of Vista, such as enhanced security, user account control, instant search, Windows Meeting Space, and the Aero interface. You may be less familiar with internal advantages such as SuperFetch, cache management, protected processes, the multithreaded kernel, resistance to system hangs on I/O, and so forth. These are the real reasons that I want Vista. When you get a new operating system, opt for the gut-level improvements, not for just a pretty face. That means hardware that can deliver more than a new graphics card and an additional gig of RAM."

To read more, go to:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2072253,00.asp

The Tech Night Owl: Before You Return that Gadget

Yes, I know. Not everyone is tech savvy, and it’s a sad fact that many of those consumer electronics companies seem to think that making a better product means packing in more and more features until the things are practically overflowing.

Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://macnightowl.com/newsletter/2006/12/25/newsletter-issue-369/#gadget

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

The Tech Night Owl Newsletter: The Night Owl’s Ongoing Email Odyssey

I want you all to know that I’m fundamentally an optimistic person. In addition, I like to think I am loyal, particularly to products that get the job done without a lot of fussing. I dislike reading about lots of workarounds to make something function correctly, because it just doesn’t sit well with me. If a product is designed properly, the initial setup ought to be more than sufficient for most of you, and the special configuration process ought to be the exception.

Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://macnightowl.com/newsletter/2006/12/25/newsletter-issue-369/#odyssey

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

While a lot of our “competitors” have taken time off tor the holidays, The Tech Night Owl LIVE will continue to present all-new shows. I might consider a vacation some time in the future, but there are big plans afoot in 2007 to expand both radio shows into some uncharted waters, so I will have to wait. Indeed, there’s no rest for the weary, but I’m not weary. In fact, I’m quite excited about the prospects for the future.