When Larry O'Connor was a teenager, he was frustrated with high prices for Apple II memory, seemingly held artificially high. So he found a source for DRAM memory chips and started building his own Apple II memory cards for sale at a third of what others were charging. Now, twenty some years later, he's running Other World Computing, still selling memory at great prices, and still taking great care of his customers.

At Macworld, TMO sat down and chatted with Lawrence R. O'Connor, the CEO of Other World Computing and the President of Newer Technology. Larry doesn't really focus on the title, however, and for those who looked carefully, his modest Macworld badge simply said "OWC Larry."

Several readers asked us about compatible SSDs to be installed in MacBook Air.

You will need 1.8" PATA SSDs, with a 5mm thickness and featuring a ZIF socket. As there are different sizes of ZIF, you will need the smallest version.

We managed to get our hands on Apple's new wired keyboard (it really doesn't have a name since it's a stock product with new machines), a $50 product that functions much like any other keyboard....

First, the keys are identical to a MacBook—flat, little travel, and with space in between each key. Second, the Help key has been replaced with "fn", which functions much like its notebook equivalent—the function keys now have other primary purposes, such as volume, brightness (if your machine supports that), and more. Third, the function keys go up to F19, allowing you to program just a bit more. Finally, our friend, the Apple key is now simply "Command" with the cloverleaf logo—this should end some confusion, and make third-party keyboards match a bit more.

In the era of MacBooks, MacBook Pro's and MacBook Air's, an iBook looks like a dinosaur. However, if it still works, that machine will still be usefull for some purposes.

Reboutte, a member of our fora, dediced to repair a broken iBook - apparently a wire had come loose, and made a short circuit.

According to TorrentFreak, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) last week released their latest report, summing up the digital music landscape at the start of 2008. The IFPI claims in the report that for every legal music download, there are 20 illegal downloads taking place. Or in other words, illegal downloading is happening at a rate that is 20 times that of legal downloading. This, says the IFPI, lead to US$3.7 billion in industry losses. But there are some big holes in that claim.

I'm not going to argue that piracy doesn't causes losses for the industry -- I am very certain it does. But I do think that the recording industry is vastly overstating those losses and misleading the public.......

Further, a recent study showed that P2P downloading actually leads to more purchases of CDs in stores. We've set up a poll below to test that theory. For anyone who has ever downloaded music illegally via a P2P network, please respond to the anonymous poll...

I've been using iCab 4 for three weeks now, and I have to say that I like it....

The biggest difference between iCab 4 and all earlier versions of this browser is that iCab 4 no longer uses the rendering engine that Clauss developed and has been improving for over a decade (first on the Atari ST). As Clauss explains it, this is because "Apple dropped support for some important features like the Java embedding API on Intel Macs, so the only official way to embed Java applets was to use WebKit in Carbon applications (iCab 3 is a Carbon application)."

Another issue is that web developers do a very poor job of holding to standards, so there's a lot of work involved in making sure a browser handles improper HTML decently. As they tend to only test their sites in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, using Clauss' rendering engine meant a lot more troubleshooting than one man should have to do.

So iCab 4 uses Apple's WebKit, which came to the Mac with Safari 2. This means that iCab will be able to render any page that Safari does. (Safari 2 came with Mac OS X 10.3.9, and as that's the oldest version of the Mac OS with WebKit support, it's the oldest version of OS X that can work with iCab 4.)....

After a little testing, I made iCab 4 my default browser almost 4 weeks ago. I've visited dozens and dozens of websites (most Mac-related or general interest), and I've only had problems with two.

I can't use the new version of Yahoo Mail. iCab only works with the Classic version.
Some of the options are missing in Google Gmail, such as "select all"....

iCab is a great little browser.....

Anyhow, this isn't a review of iCab. It's a suggestion that you give it a try.... you might like it.

There comes a time in every point-and-shooter's life when he or she wonders if there is more to photography than a palm-sized block of aluminum stowed away in one's pocket. The ultracompact point-and-shoot has come so far in the last ten years that it's tempting to write off DSLRs as largely irrelevant to most people's lives, not offering enough utility to offset their bulky presence and hefty price tag. As soon as I bought my first truly great ultracompact a few years ago, the Casio EX-Z750, I was in this boat. 7.2 megapixels in your pocket… what more could one possibly need? After eventually moving up to the excellent 7x zoom Casio EX-V8, I told myself I would never need a DSLR.

But then I tried one for the first one, on loan from the fine folks at Nikon. A Nikon D80. Seemingly the "it" camera for the last couple of years. This article will not so much be a review of the D80, but rather a guide for DSLR virgins considering purchasing their first full sized digital camera.
First and foremost, will you use it?....

Most serious photographers will tell you there are only two real choices in the DSLR market: Nikon and Canon. Although companies like Olympus and Sony also make DSLRs, Nikon and Canon have such strong legacies in SLR photography that they've earned an unshakable amount of trust among professional photographers. Being an amateur, I am not one to question the conventional wisdom of professionals, so as far as I'm concerned, either Nikon or Canon should be your choice (for now, at least). The Nikon/Canon religious wars are less like the Mac/PC wars and more like BMW/Mercedes wars. With Macs and PCs, your Mac people think that PCs are horrendous piles of garbage and your PC people think Macs are overpriced, niche devices. BMW and Mercedes, on the other hand, really only differ in style… much like Nikons and Canons. They are equally priced, equally equipped, and even take cues off each other in the feature department.

One of the oddities of the MacBook Air is, as a system without a FireWire port, an optical drive, or an accessible hard drive, the act of reinstalling Mac OS X and migrating your files from your old system to this new one is more complicated than it has been in the past.

Without FireWire there's no "target mode," a feature that lets you mount a laptop's drive on another Mac as if it were an external hard drive. It's a feature that's been around for a long time (dating back to a SCSI version on old PowerBooks), and it's a convenient way to migrate files on and off of laptops, but the MacBook Air just won't do it. (And no, sadly, there's no USB equivalent.)

But Apple has taken the MacBook Air's release as an opportunity to upgrade its Migration Assistant — which previously focused on transferring files via FireWire — and other software in order to make life easier for MacBook Air users and, presumably, other Mac users via some future software update.

10.5.2 promises to be a whopper of an update but can Apple fix enough to restore consumer confidence in the company? Here are some of the more glaring defects to watch for.

10.5 Leopard wasn't ready when it was released. Apple knew it and released it anyway. Two updates later and they're going to have a hard time winning back consumer confidence in - and respect for - the company.

In most cases, operating system updates are a good thing because they fix problems and sometimes provide new functionality for you to use and enjoy. There's no problem with this, but when these updates cause more problems than they solve, then you know something's wrong....

Down to this day, I still don't expect much out of Windows, but as a Mac user, I do expect a lot out of OS X. It's impressed me time and again, and this has made me elevate it above any other operating system in my mind. The seamless way in which OS updates are installed on OS X has always impressed me, and so far, I've applied them all without any problems. When I saw that another update was available the other day, I decided to grab it once I read through my RSS feeds, but after I had weeded through my aggregator, the blogosphere's reaction to the update encouraged me to change my mind.....

You see, I'm trying to avoid having the same experience on OS X that I did on Windows so that I can keep my faith in the operating system and everything that it's supposed to represent.

Music fans around the world faced confusion today as it was announced they would be able to download unlimited, free songs without breaking the law.

A revamped online file-sharing service had vowed to offer a catalogue of 30million free songs that are compatible with iPods, but record labels have denied they had granted permission to share the songs.

Qtrax.... is the latest online music venture counting on the lure of free songs to draw in music fans.

The key to their revolutionary venture was thought to be advertising, which they hope will pay the bills, namely record company licensing fees.

A revamped online file-sharing service that promised to offer unlimited, free music downloads from all the major record labels hit an apparent snag Sunday after one denied it had given the service permission.

Qtrax touted in a press release Sunday morning that it was the first Internet file-swapping service to be "fully embraced by the music industry," and boasted it would carry up to 30 million tracks from "all the major labels."

New York-based Warner Music undermined that claim, declaring in a statement that it "has not authorized the use of our content on Qtrax's recently announced service."

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but in case you haven't heard: The era of paid music downloads is coming to an end (despite the fact that online sales are growing).

Qtrax, which has signed all four major labels (EMI, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group), launched yesterday with 25 million songs (compared to around 3 m for Amazon and 6 m for iTunes).

It isn't pretty - the downloaded songs are not compatible with iPods and have to be played via a proprietary player built on the Songbird platform. Ads are displayed during playback, even on music devices. For now the service is Windows only, so Mac users are left out. And right now the service is down completely from all the attention it's getting.

"Qtrax, a new free music download service, backed off claims that it has deals with all four major music companies after Warner Music Group denied it had agreed terms with the start-up.

"Warner Music Group has not authorized the use of our content on Qtrax's recently announced service," Warner, the No. 3 music company, said in statement late on Sunday.

Qtrax said late on Sunday, "We are in discussion with Warner Music Group to ensure that the service is licensed and we hope to reach an agreement shortly."

A source close to Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, told Reuters it also did not have a deal with Qtrax but discussions were continuing."

If last November you googled one of thousands of innocuous and common search terms, such as "Microsoft excel to access" or "how to teach your dogs to fetch," you were in line for an Internet attack that infects PCs with spam senders, password stealers, and other kinds of nasty malware.

Beginning on November 24 and continuing for less than a week, bad guys loaded up more than 40,000 Web pages with malicious software and thousands of common search terms. They then employed an automated network of malware-infected computers--known as a botnet--to link to those sites in blog-comment spam and other places. The mentions elevated the position of the poisoned sites in search results, often to the first page.

"Gartner analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu generated a bit of buzz Monday with a note published in the Gartner Semiconductor DQ Monday Report, a newsletter sent out to clients and journalists."

"Buyers save billions of dollars each year bidding on eBay auctions, according to a new study that quantifies the benefits online consumers enjoy over and above what is derived by sellers, or eBay itself.

The independent research by two statisticians from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business found buyers saved $7 billion that they might have otherwise been ready to pay in a study of eBay auction behavior in 2003."

From time to time, Steve Jobs has said that certain product features were added because of lots of customer requests. Notice he never mentions the press as being the source of such changes, but wouldn't that still make sense?

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