The resurgence of Apple, the Macintosh, and now the iPhone results in a continuous discussion of Apple's opportunities in the enterprise. However, Apple treats the enterprise differently than other companies do, and those who expect Apple to suddenly cater to the enterprise based on recent consumer successes need to have a good understanding of Apple's approach, according to Computerworld on Thursday.

Interest in Apple is rising dramatically amongst IT executives. As they seek to engage Apple to help them solve some of their problems and learn about the benefits of Apple's UNIX OS, they need to study how Apple as a company works, observed Robert Mitchell in a tour de force essay on the business issues associated with Apple as an enterprise vendor.

If Apple Inc. were a football team, the New England Patriots would have had some serious competition this year.

The company is the undefeated king of cool in the consumer electronics and home computer markets. It is rapidly gaining yardage in the broader personal computing market and is experiencing a resurgence of popularity in traditional Macintosh niches such as education, marketing and creative departments.

With all of this momentum, you'd think that the Mac might be ready for a come-from-behind win in the enterprise. But on that field of play, Apple remains 1st and 10 at its own 10-yard line.

That's ironic, because corporate interest in a broader role for Macs is up dramatically among IT executives, driven by changes in what the Mac has to offer, by Apple's success in the cons
umer market and its other niches, and by corporate trends where, thanks to virtualization and a migration to Web-based applications, Windows' grip on the desktop may be starting to loosen just a bit.

Earlier this week Apple released updated Mac Pros that use Intel's new Penryn processors. Also new is the fact that the standard Mac Pro configuration now comes with eight (instead of four) cores.

Of course, what I've been wondering (as I sit here and think about getting a new Mac Pro) is how does the new standard eight-core Mac Pro perform compare to the old high-end Mac Pro? I've gathered Geekbench 2 results for both Mac Pros to find out.

As the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas winds down to lackluster reviews, Apple is expected to grab the spotlight with an ultra-slim laptop computer and online movie rentals at its biggest annual show next week.

The new products are seen more as enhancements to Apple's current offerings rather than ones that pack the "wow factor" of last year's star attraction, the iPhone.

This Developer Note describes the Mac Pro computer introduced in January 2008. It includes information about distinguishing features of the computer, including components on the main logic board: the microprocessors, the North Bridge memory controller, the South Bridge I/O controller, and the buses that connect them to each other and to the I/O interfaces.

The computer comes with Mac OS X version 10.5.1 or later installed.

The quad-core Mac Pro consists of one Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Harpertown" 5400 Series processor. The 8-core Mac Pro consists of two Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Harpertown" 5400 Series processors.

The value of the computer model machine identifier string is MacPro3,1.

On Monday Intel announced the first mobile quad-core processor called Penryn. The new silicon is the cousin to the Penryn desktop processor, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650, announced on 12 November 2007.

The next generation transistors, used in the new Penryn processors (Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon family) feature "new high-k + metal gate material that will allow for higher frequencies, lower resistance, less leakage and lower power consumption."

I recently (nearly) completed a novel that I started over the summer. If you check my publication history, you can see that the rate at which I have published columns on Low End Mac has dwindled to nearly zero. That's because nearly all my free time for writing has been dedicated to writing a novel.

I'm not here to tell you about the novel (no publisher yet, so no details, sorry), but I can tell you about the experiences I have had writing two different books - the only books I have written in my life - one was written using Microsoft Word; the other with Pages.

To be fair, these were not scientifically controlled conditions. First, the book written in Word is a school workbook that's full of illustrations and handouts and tables and charts. It is called Conceptual Astronomy I, and is published by TeachingPoint. It was the first book I wrote, and that brings along all sorts of technical challenges. The second book is a novel, not nearly so technically challenging a document, and I had the experience of writing the first one behind me.

This article could still be potentially useful to a person contemplating starting a major writing project. The gist of the matter is that Pages is clean, nimble, quick to respond, and limited in functionality - whereas Word can do almost anything if you can just figure out where the command for what you want is hidden.

And Word 2004 for the Mac is slooooow as Christmas.

In the world of computers, you can never have too many megabytes or megahertz.

That sounds dated in this day of gigahertz and gigabytes, but the principle remains the same: More is better, whether you're looking at CPU speed, system memory, hard drive space, or graphics processor speed and VRAM.

Where it's not necessarily true is digital photography, where there's an unhealthy fixation on megapixels.

Not that megapixels are bad! Far from it: they are a big factor in how large you can make a photo and still have it appear to be sharp. But in the rush to market megapixels, images can actually be worse with a high megapixel camera than from a lower megapixel one...

The Megapixel Myth states that more pixels always means better pictures, so the number of megapixels in an image is the most important predictor of output quality.

There's some truth to this: When comparing an 8 x 10 from a 1.3 MP camera to an 8 x 10 from a 3 MP camera, you'll really see the difference. The lower resolution image will be a bit fuzzy everywhere, while the 3 MP image should appear as sharp as you'd expect. And you'd expect an 8 MP image would be even better - and that just might not be the case.

Although Digigraphica puts the focus on digital photography, that doesn't mean a digital camera is always the best solution. We're realists. We understand that traditional film cameras are sometimes a better solution. It's in that light that we present our guide to picking the right camera.

We will explain some of the issues involved and then let you to go to the next article or choose from two or more alternatives. We hope this will help you understand the basics and lead you to the type of camera that best suits your needs.

Considering that the keyboard is the primary input device for most of the PCs ever made, it's amazing how many times manufacturers have gotten it completely, laughably wrong. After painstakingly reviewing scads of the most lackluster keyboards, I systematically whittled them down to these ten all-time offenders, based on four factors: feel, layout, functionality, and infamy. All of these machines date from the 1970s and 1980s, but don't get too comfortable - recently, Apple released a new keyboard for its iMac line that looks suspiciously like a Chiclet keyboard of old. While the verdict on that keyboard is still out, there's room for future additions to this list. Stay tuned...

What's in a brand? Technology, of course, and a pleasing public face. Few companies are as adept at blending those ingredients as Apple and Intel. But this week, the two Silicon Valley heavyweights were a study in contrasts as Apple made an exceptionally smart PR move, while Intel gave itself an ugly black eye.

Apple shines with a smart "think pink" move

In a week when gender issues highlighted the presidential campaign, Apple garnered a basketful of good press when it named Andrea Jung to its board of directors. Of course, one could say it's about time, since Jung is, amazingly enough, only the second woman (astronaut Sally Ride was first) to sit on the company's board. Still, with Macworld Expo just around the corner, it's a good time to generate favorable publicity.

Gender and PR issues aside, the move makes enormous business sense as well. Jung is the CEO of Avon, and she obviously knows more than a little bit about marketing to women. Moreover, she also sits on the board of GE, the parent company of NBC Universal, which has been scuffling with Apple over the pricing of digital downloads.

"Opera chief executive Jon S. von Tetzchner flew in from Norway for an update on the company's Web browser, including the claim that the next version could be about ten times faster than Internet Explorer.

According to von Tetzchner, Opera's is expanding into the mobile market. And, not surprisingly, the upcoming Opera 9.5 revision will be faster and more efficient, he said."

"As the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas winds down to lackluster reviews, Apple Inc is expected to grab the spotlight with an ultra-slim laptop computer and online movie rentals at its biggest annual show next week."

"The scientist who designed a notebook computer for poor children that is being produced and sold by a nonprofit foundation has set up a company to commercialize the technology with a goal of producing a $75 laptop computer.

Mary Lou Jepsen, who left her post as chief technology officer of the One Laptop per Child Foundation at the end of last year, said on the company's Web site that she has founded the company, called Pixel Qi, and described it as "a spin-out" from the nonprofit group."

I'm sure many of you were blindsided when Apple quietly upgraded the Mac Pro and the Xserve to use the new Intel "Harpertown" Xeon chips, code-named Penryn. Now it's perfectly clear that this is a worthwhile upgrade. The new chips are not only faster, but cooler running, consuming less power.

Every time you install an application with a traditional installer under Mac OS X, you have to enter your user password first, unless, of course, the installer has no provision for that. And most do.

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