By 2011, Apple will double its market share in the US and Europe - a trend that will also mean an onslaught of Apple devices invading corporate networks, new research predicts.

According to analyst firm Gartner, Apple's rapid growth over recent years will see the company take nine percent of the US and Western European personal computing market within the next three years.

Leaked docs show Apple is prepping an all new update to their top end laptops.

The Air only dropped onto our radar a couple of weeks back, but now it looks like Apple is readying another new laptop, this time an update of their top notch MacBook Pro.

With Apple's MacBook Air having reached store shelves, it might not be too much longer before the company updates the rest of its notebook lineup.....

It could be time for new MacBook Pros, according to several rumors circulating this week.....

I had to replace the hard drive in my MacBook Pro a few months ago. If you've never done it, I can tell you that after over 20 screws, a little prying and pulling and then reassembling with your fingers crossed, there's probably a moment of stomach-turning worry when you hit the power button. But some people have a knack for making things look a little less gut wrenching.

MacBook Pro owner Max Million replaced his hard drive in about 40 minutes. Working from the excellent instructions at ifixit, he put a 320 gig drive into his laptop. And while he was at it, he put together a time-lapse video of the process that's under 3 minutes long but still manages to convey the tenacity required for the undertaking. So, here's to the brave souls who have no regard for the phrase "not user serviceable". Video after the jump...

News flash for Steve Jobs: not everyone- including lots of folks who would love a MacBook or MacBook Pro- has $2K to burn at this point. Some don't even have $1,500, or hell, even $1,000.....

If Apple was able to offer a stripped-down MacBook or MacBook Pro for, say, $699, I am betting that you would see a whole new group of customers who frankly could not resist buying one.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Unable to compete with Google using its own resources, Microsoft has made a bid to purchase Yahoo, the second-place Internet search engine.

According to our site logs, 3.4-3.8% of our search engine traffic comes from Yahoo. Microsoft's own search engine has recently taken third place from Ask Jeeves (Ask.com), both currently at the 0.4% mark. AOL is below the 0.3% mark, and the rest are barely blips on the radar.

Some things never change: Microsoft has a 30 year history of copying what it can, leveraging its dominance, and buying into markets it can't take over on its own.

From the day of his appointment as Apple CEO in February 1996, Gil Amelio presided over an ailing company. After the near-disastrous reign of Michael Spindler, Amelio promised to change the corporate ethos of Apple.....

Despite being profitable, the cost cutting measures had a negative effect on Apple's already plummeting market share. Revenues for the 1996 fiscal year had dropped by 15% while the rest of the personal computer industry had increased by 18%.

Amelio and the rest of his senior staff began searching for a way out.....

On the advice of Ellen Hancock, Apple's CTO, Amelio decided to drop all the licensing options because Apple would have only limited control over the software. Apple had already made and broken many promises about Copland, so it was also eliminated, leaving Be and NeXT.

The obvious choice for Apple was Be. Founded by former Apple COO Jean Louis Gassée and Steve Sakoman, the founder of the Newton project, Be was ten years old and had created a microkernel based operating system, BeOS.

The company already had its operating system running on Macs, and BeOS was lauded in many Mac circles for its speed and user interface. BeOS was only in beta form, though. By Gassée's own estimates, it would take years to complete BeOS to a point where it would be ready for the mass market.....

NeXTstep was admired by all in the computer industry. Jobs delivered an experience described as "more Mac than the Mac". NeXTstep used a highly intuitive interface on top of an advanced operating system based on a microkernel.....

Talks began on December 2, 1996 with a meeting between Amelio and Jobs.....The merger was announced to the public on January 7, 1997..... Jobs was about to seize control from the flagging Amelio in a dramatic coup.

Reader Dimitri wrote in to let us know that some owners with new Mac Pros and ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT are having some problems reminiscent of iMacs with the same model number video card....

Struggling Internet giant Yahoo is not ready to sell itself to Microsoft just yet - at least that's what Yahoo's chief executive Jerry Yang told his employees Friday.

In an e-mail addressed to "fellow yahoos," Yang and non-executive chairman Roy Bostock said that they continue to weigh the best options for the company but that "absolutely no decisions have been made."....

One of the possible "strategic alternatives" could be a deal from Google. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt contacted Yang to offer whatever Yahoo needed to prevent a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo.

Yahoo Inc. might be forgiven for feeling the noose tighten around its neck as it scrambles for alternatives to a hostile takeover bid from Microsoft Corp. The troubled Internet giant's options were pared down further Monday when News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said his media company – one of a handful of possible suitors – would not make a competing bid.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, meanwhile, went on the offensive, denouncing speculation about a business alliance between Yahoo and Google Inc. designed to keep Microsoft at bay.

"Yahoo First launched its Music Unlimited service in 2005. At the time, the service was seen as a major lower-priced competitor to other all-you-can-eat services such as Napster and Rhapsody. Since then, Music Unlimited has largely floundered and all but disappeared.

Last week, the site made headlines, however, as pundits began speculating that the service was on its way out."

"Separate reports from Gartner Dataquest and iSuppli released Monday came to the same conclusion: late 2007 was a horrible time to be in the DRAM business."

"A day after Google slammed Microsoft's Friday bid for Yahoo as troubling and possibly illegal, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer reiterated his company's stance that a combined Microsoft-Yahoo will serve as much needed competition against Google in the online advertising space.

In what was billed as a strategic update for financial analysts, Microsoft split its time providing product updates, as well as making its case for its unexpected bid for Yahoo. Microsoft executives said that Windows Vista SP1 had been released to manufacturing."

"In the wake of its much publicized bid for Yahoo, Microsoft on Monday released the first service pack (SP1) for Windows Vista to manufacturing, with a retail version expected in the coming months.

Vista made its consumer debut in January 2007, and SP1 marks the first major upgrade to the operating system. Microsoft released details about Vista SP1 in August, and opened it to a moderately-sized audience for testing in the weeks thereafter."

All right, is the iPhone still extremely popular, or is demand declining? What about the iPod and the Mac, or even the Apple TV, which is due for a software revision shortly?

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