The new Leopard operating system is locking up the keyboards of some MacBook Pro laptops, according to some users. The only apparent solution is to reboot the computer.

Messages posted in Apple's support forums claim the keyboard problem crops up only after moves to Mac OS X 10.5, and they say that it's intermittent. "The keyboard will stop working and become unresponsive - the caps and num lock lights won't even turn on," said a user identified as Cub man. "Then after a few minutes, it turns on again and is fine until I let it sit for a while."

Apple's new Leopard operating system took a sizable bite of the Japanese retail operating system market during October and accounted for over half of all sales of packaged operating system software despite being on sale for only the last six days of the month.

OS X Leopard.. took a 53.9 percent share of the market, according to figures from Japan's BCN....

Combined with other sales of other operating systems including Tiger, Apple had an overall 60.7 percent share of the market in October... a big jump from the 15.5 percent share it had in September.....

In addition to the "Santa Rosa" chipset, the newest MacBook sports the GMA X3100 integrated graphics chip. It's superior to the GMA 950 used in previous models of MacBook in that it supports hardware transform and lighting. It also supports vertex and pixel shader model 3.0 at 32 bit floating point per vector. And don't forget Anisotropic filtering of up to 16 samples.

Today we're posting results for some "serious" professional graphics applications.

MacBook Pro 2.2 = MacBook Pro C2D "Rosa" 2.2GHz with GeForce 8600M (128M)
MacBook 2.2 = MacBook C2D "Rosa" 2.2GHz with GMA X3100
MacBook 2.16 = MacBook C2D 2.16GHz with GMA 950
(All three systems had 2GB of RAM - two matching 1GB SODIMMs and were running OS X 'Leopard.')

Conclusion: Not only is the new MacBook with the GMA X3100 a bummer for high rez gamers, it's going to disappoint pro users when running serious graphics intensive apps....

In addition to the "Santa Rosa" chipset, the newest MacBook sports the GMA X3100 integrated graphics chip. It's superior to the GMA 950 used in previous models of MacBook in that it supports hardware transform and lighting. It also supports vertex and pixel shader model 3.0 at 32 bit floating point per vector. And don't forget Anisotropic filtering of up to 16 samples.

But will it run my 3D accelerated games at "playable" speeds when high quality settings are used?

MacBook Pro 2.2 = MacBook Pro C2D "Rosa" 2.2GHz with GeForce 8600M (128M)
MacBook 2.2 = MacBook C2D "Rosa" 2.2GHz with GMA X3100
MacBook 2.16 = MacBook C2D 2.16GHz with GMA 950
(All three systems had 2GB of RAM (two matching 1GB SODIMMs)

Conclusion: ...the new MacBook with the GMA X3100 is no "barn stormer" when it comes to gaming at high quality and native resolution (1280x800)....

Remember when low-end Macs were not as good as high end Macs? With Apple's quiet announcement of their new updated Macbook line I continue to be astounded that people continue to buy Macbook Pros.

This started a year ago when my wife announced that after years of using a PC she wanted to buy a Macbook Pro. So I started researching for her. I looked at graphs and charts on AnandTech and compared specs on Apple's own website. What amazed me was that the important specifications between the regular Macbooks and the Macbook Pros were nearly identical. At least in most of the ways that would effect performance for a casual user. Granted, there were differences, the Pros had the option to put in one more gigabyte of RAM, slightly better video cards, and were bigger in size, but these slight improvements didn't, in my mind, justify a nearly 100% increase in price between the models. So I advised my wife to buy a regular Macbook and we haven't looked back.

In a fight between a penguin and a leopard which one wins? The leopard of course - but when it comes to choosing an operating system, Windows XP is top dog for silicon.com readers.

Asked which operating system they would use if they had a choice, Windows XP was named by almost half (42 per cent) of respondents as their numero uno.

And while that may sound like good news for Microsoft, there is a sting in the tail for the folks in Redmond. Among silicon.com readers at least, the most recent iteration of Windows - aka Vista - garnered just 14 per cent of the vote, making it less popular than both Mac OS X and Linux....

Mac OS X came second, with the backing of close to a third (27 per cent) of readers....

Road Apples are Apple's more compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they're not really bad - simply designs unable to work as well as they should have.

When it was introduced in January 2005, the Mac mini was the smallest desktop computer on the market - and the least expensive Macintosh Apple had ever built. Measuring 6.5" square and 2" tall, the Mac mini was dwarved by almost any desktop computer ever built.

The secret to getting the Mac mini so small: Using notebook computer components. That's also a big part of the reason the Mac mini is considered a Road Apple. Not that it's a bad little machine: It has a decent amount of power, respectable graphics, plenty of ports, and supports up to 1 GB of RAM.

As some of you may have read, Wal-Mart is selling a $200 "green" Everex PC, which runs a customized version of Ubuntu Linux known as gOS. It's designed around access to Google applications for basic functions.

The system itself is pretty basic, with a 1.5 GHz VIA processor, 512 MB of RAM, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM "combo" drive, and an 80 GB hard drive. This reads like top-of-the-line for 2003, and $200 essentially buys you just that - except at a fraction of the size. The motherboard is the mini ITX standard, which means it is only 6.7"/17cm square (the motherboard has a slightly larger footprint than the 6.5"/16.6cm square Mac mini, which is only 2"/51mm tall).

There is a PCI slot, 2 USB ports, an ethernet port, and built-in video. The case, however, is a standard sized minitower (about 24"/60cm square), which research indicates is most popular amongst Wal-Mart customers.

The system, however, is not the key part of the offering. The most interesting part is that it runs Linux - a version called gOS - and attempts to offer all desired features to a novice computer user. It features a Mac-like 'dock' at the bottom of the screen with friendly looking icons for Google Docs, Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia amongst others. It also comes with OpenOffice and Firefox.

The question that arises from this is whether it will threaten Apple or not, and what it means in the long run.

Wal-Mart officials said Wednesday that the retailer plans to re-stock a hot selling, Linux-based PC that is currently sold out on its Web site.

The Everex TC2502 Green gPC will again be available at Walmart.com "in the coming weeks," said a spokesman for the company.

Wal-Mart began selling the Everex gPC online for $199 earlier this month, but it's currently listed as "Sold Out". Wal-Mart's spokesman wouldn't disclose precise sales figures, but said the gPC "has been one of the top performing desktop computers on Wal-Mart.com over the last few weeks."

My track record with eMacs has not been the greatest. My first was a 700 MHz with a Combo drive. I purchased it refurbished after the second generation eMacs came out, which meant I got a great deal on it - and Apple's one-year warranty. Good thing, as it ended up in the service department when it simply refused to boot.

A few years ago, I picked up a pair of 1.25 GHz eMacs, one with a Combo drive and one with a SuperDrive. I sold the eMac 700 to my oldest son. The Combo drive died out of warranty, and I replaced it with a 16x dual layer Pioneer SuperDrive.

The other eMac has had inexplicable problems for almost a year, and it wasn't until last week that I finally figured it out. One of the FireWire ports had broken - snapped off and sitting loose until I unplugged a FireWire cable. Then part of the plug came out with the cable (photo below). Good thing it has two FireWire ports, but it would still lock up at any time. My plan was to snip out the contacts and hope for the best.

Then the other eMac died. Monday night the screen got dim and took on a strong magenta shift. Contrast was horrid, and Tuesday morning the screen was completely dark. I'm beginning to wonder if eMacs have reliability issues - or am I just unlucky?

Sure, Apple TV is pretty close to useless if wanna watch stuff on your television. But it's a godsend to at least one independent filmmaker.

This weekend, at a neighborhood movie theater in Brooklyn, New York, an Apple TV made its way into the projection booth, streaming a high-def digital flick onto the big screen. And when we say big screen, we mean the really big screen.

With the New York premiere of his debut feature, "The Insurgents," writer-director Scott Dacko is using Apple's video contraption in place of a digital tape deck, bypassing so many of the hassles that plague poorly-funded digital filmmakers struggling to reach an audience.

"As far as I know, we're the first people to have ever done this," Dacko told us. "And it looked great." Well, it looked good. Dacko acknowledges that the image is "a little flawed" in places, thanks to some heavy compression from Apple's web-centric video codec. But his Apple TV kludge is cheap. And it's easy.

If a NitroAV 2-port Firewire800 card is installed, MacBook Pro computers may have issues waking from sleep mode. If this occurs, waking the computer from sleep mode requires shutting down and restarting.

Products affected
• MacBook Pro

Solution

In order to avoid this issue, remove the NitroAV 2-Port FireWire 800 Card before allowing the computer to sleep. Once the computer is awake and not in a sleep mode, you can reinsert the card and proceed.

Zooming around a sharp corner while playing Electronic Arts' Need for Speed video game on my computer, I spun out of control, hit a guardrail, and sailed over a cliff to my doom. It's an outcome that's all too common now, but one that wasn't even possible until Apple began using zippy Intel processors in its computers, prompting EA to create versions of its games for the iMac.

It's been just a year since Apple made the switch, and the iMac has very quickly become the machine to beat if you want an all-in-one desktop computer. Between its design makeover, new multimedia software, and the ability to play games once confined to Windows-based computers and dedicated game consoles, the iMac remains the undisputed champ even as rivals Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, and Sony step up their offerings.

Yesterday's commentary, about bringing back Classic Mac OS features, scored more comments than any article I've written in recent days. No, it's not the result of my peerless prose, although I do hope that helped a bit. Instead, I made some arguments that struck a nerve or two on the part of many long-time and extremely loyal Mac users. There's a growing feeling that they are being taken for granted as Apple becomes more and more of a mainstream company.

Are you ready to write Tiger's epitaph? Well, despite the fact that Wednesday afternoon's release of the Mac OS 10.4.11 updater represents the last major update for that system, there will most likely be security fixes from time to time.

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