Computer giant Apple made its first direct pitch to Russian consumers Wednesday, showcasing a line of new products in Moscow.

But analysts said Apple's marketing style in Russia had been slow to catch on in a country where high-tech consumers need convincing and fans of the Mac are few and far between.

Some of the products showcased Wednesday, such as MacBook Air, the world's thinnest laptop, will go on sale next week in the United States, while others, such as iPods and Apple TV are already on sale in Russia.

Apple officials also presented the MacBook Air, which was first unveiled last week in San Francisco by CEO Steve Jobs.

Apple official said the ultramodern notebook would ship to Russia "in a matter of weeks," but without Cyrillic keypads. The MacBook Air will retail for a whopping 67,900 rubles ($2,740), more than $1,000 more than the $1,700 U.S. price tag.

Sergei Skripnikov, an IT analyst for Expert magazine, described Apple's marketing strategy in Russia as counterproductive and focused only on a narrow market segment.

Speculation about an imminent update to Apple Inc.'s Leopard operating system has quickened in recent days, with at least one Web site claiming the release of Mac OS X 10.5.2, the second update to Leopard since its October release, may be out as soon as this week....

Among the anticipated fixes and enhancements expected in Mac OS X 10.5.2, most bets have been placed on changes to the new Stacks feature in the Dock; an option to turn the now-translucent menu bar opaque again; DVD and CD sharing, one of the features CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated when he touted the new MacBook Air last week; and modifications to Time Machine, Leopard's backup and restore application.

Apple will probably release the second revision update of Mac OS X Leopard very soon, latest developer seeds indicate....

However, expect the update to weight as much as nearly half a gigabyte. If you're working, think about it twice before hitting the "Install" button!

This week Slashdot (and many, many others) reported that KDE 4.0 has been released for Windows and OS X. KDE (K Desktop Environment) has been a popular GUI for *nix systems and there have been ways of getting it to run (mostly) on OS X prior to this native port if you were willing to use X11 on OS X). RangerRick (of OpenNMS "fame" did much of the heavy lifting for the Mac side of this project, including the package distributions.

To start, you'll need to grab the torrent download – I picked the one labeled "everything," weighing in at over 2GB.......

So, why would you need to run KDE? First and foremost: geek cred. OK, joking aside - and even if you're comfortable with your current geek karma level - KDE for OS X brings a plethora of applications for you to try out. While many have not been compiled/distributed yet, that site will give you plenty of browsing fodder, and the "everything" bundle + other dmg packages deliver well over 130 pre-built OS X KDE apps.

Personally speaking, this is where Linux and Windows diverge. There is little to no innovation in Linux. One cannot afford to be as structured in an open source environment. Yes old ideas are used innovatively but there is no new stuff....

I am however always careful not to write people off Prima Facie. If people 'harp on' about Macs surely there must be some intrinsic value in the product. Why is is that people always think that you're either Mac, Windows or Linux? Never can one use all three harmoniously?

The spec tweaks might be minor, but the MacBook remains a highly desirable and excellent value laptop for everything except hardcore gaming

Apple's smug 'Mac versus PC' adverts give the impression that using a MacBook means dealing with the computing equivalent of an obnoxious, self-satisfied slacker. Happily the reality is very different: it comes pre-loaded with Leopard, which is indisputably easier to use than Vista, and the ability to dual boot with Gates' OS gives it a real leg-up compared to Windows-only laptops.

In addition to regular cleaning of your computer and input devices (keyboards, trackpads, and mice), you may find it necessary to disinfect them.

Multiple people using the same computer, people using the computer when they were ill, and the particular environment where the computer is used, are a few reasons you may wish to disinfect areas of the computer that people come into contact with the most.

Two months ago I walked through how to build a Hackintosh Mac on the cheap using PC parts. Since that post, the OSx86 scene has changed rapidly, and now you can install Leopard on your computer about as easily as installing Leopard on a Mac - no command line hacking required. In addition, the resulting installation is - theoretically, at least - can be upgraded without fear of breaking. As if the simplicity of the installation weren't already enough, the new installation tools fix any problems I've had in the past (for example, I no longer need to keep my install DVD in the drive to boot into OS X), and support the Wi-Fi card on my motherboard out-of-the-box. In short, it's a winner.

With an extra 4 gigabytes of memory and two 500 gigabyte Seagate Barracuda hard drive successfully installed in my new Mac Pro, I fired up the benchmark programs to see if the upgrades have boosted performance.

....It appears having 4 sticks of memory installed does aid performance.

Then I ran XBench, which includes a hard disk test. More to the point, it allows you to test any installed hard drive, not just the boot drive. To my surprise, the new drive bested the Apple-supplied drive by about 33 percent – with a score of 70.38 versus 52.80....

My first Mac was an old PowerBook Duo 2300 I got as a birthday gift about four years ago. That's all it took to get me hooked. I started with OS 8 and quickly got a CD drive and put OS 9 on the thing. It was never fast, but it did teach me one thing - that using a computer should be an enjoyable experience and you shouldn't want to pull your hair out every time you boot it up.

According to one security vendor, Mac users are at a crossroads this year: if they prove to be as gullible as PC users, they will invite more attention by malware distributors.

At a time when spiraling malware threats have bombarded PC users, Mac users have been able to kick back and relax. 2007 saw 5.5 million viruses -- including variants -- on the hunt for vulnerable PCs, meanwhile threats to Mac users remained minuscule by comparison: two.

Still, the emergence of that pair has prompted speculation that Mac users will likely be targeted more in the coming year. If that turns out to be the case, it begs the question: will they respond to these threats better than PC users have over the years?

A few months ago, I offered to install a Wi-Fi router for a friend so she could use her laptop anywhere in her home. My friend is a self-employed writer, and a fidgety one at that, so I thought she'd snap up the offer immediately. Instead, she said all those radio waves terrified her; she was worried that they'd somehow eat her brain. I laughed, pointing out that her microwave oven and cordless phone should be considered equally hazardous, then forgot all about it.

Until the other day, when I ran across a discussion on a CNET forum about the potential health risks of Wi-Fi. A lot of people in this thread dismiss the risk of diseases like cancer, but a few advise that you not sleep within 9 feet of your router. This caught my attention, since my router is exactly 6 feet from my pillow. Worse, when I sit at my desk, it's 2 feet from my head.

The Wi-Fi Alliance takes any concern about the alleged health impact of Wi-Fi technology seriously. Although questions have been raised, a range of scientific research undertaken to date concludes that there is no evidence that low power wireless networks pose health threats to users or to the general public. Wi-Fi technology meets all national and international safety requirements and emits signals that are typically hundreds to thousands of times below the safety limits.

The World Health Organization has reviewed the various bodies of research that have been conducted and has concluded that, due to the research results and the very low exposure levels associated with Wi-Fi, there is no convincing scientific evidence that weak radio frequency signals from these wireless networks cause adverse health effects. You can find more information from the World Health Organization by clicking on the following link: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs304/en/index.html

An independent and comprehensive study sponsored by the Wi-Fi Alliance and conducted by the University of Pennsylvania in March 2007 took 356 measurements at 55 Wi-Fi sites in four countries, under conditions involving higher than normal exposures. The study found RF fields from Wi-Fi in typical environments operate far below exposure guidelines. In all cases, the measured Wi-Fi signal levels were very far below international exposure limits (IEEE C95.1-2005 and ICNIRP) and in nearly all cases far below other RF signals in the same environments. You can find the details of the study on the following link: http://hps.org/hpspublications/articles/wirelessnetworks.html

As I was listening to some talking heads debate Apple’s financial prospects on a 24-hour cable TV show this weekend, I had the vain hope that they would provide a needed dose of reality upon the bad tidings surrounding Apple Inc. these days.

When I first ranted about the limitations of watching a rented movie in 24 hours, I realize that no sane individual would disagree. Of course, that places the entertainment industry perhaps in another category.

We made a small, but possibly significant change this week on the home page of The Tech Night Owl LIVE. You see, up till now, when you entered either of our radio show sites, the latest episode would begin to play automatically after a few seconds. Behind the scenes, that process involves a simple code entry when we generate a QuickTime player window. Well, after one person said he was annoyed to hear something he didn’t want to hear play without his intervention, we changed the word “true” to “false,” and fixed the issue. From here on, you have to click the Play button to hear something.

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