Apple's growth rate in terms of Mac shipments in the first quarter outpaced that of the other top five U.S. PC makers, a research firm said Wednesday.

Apple shipments soared by 32.5% to 1 million units, compared with the 762,000 Macs shipped in the same quarter a year ago, Gartner said. Apple ended the quarter with a 6.6% market share that placed it No. 4 among the top vendors in the U.S.

Apple grabbed 6.6 per cent of the US personal computer market during Q1 on the back of a leading year-on-year 32.5 per cent jump in unit shipments, research company Gartner said yesterday.

The move saw Apple push past Toshiba to become the quarter's fourth most successful computer maker in terms of units shipped....

Third-placed Acer saw shipments drop 18.3 per cent between Q1 2007 and Q1 2008, resulting in its share of the US market falling from 11.5 per cent to 9.1 per cent. That's just 2.5 percentage points ahead of Apple....

Intel will sell more mobile CPUs than desktop processors this year, the chip giant's CEO claimed this week.

"The crossover from the desktop to the notebook [is] happening essentially a year sooner than we first had thought," said Paul Otellini at Intel's earnings conference.

Separate reports have revealed that Apple's next wave of products for 2008 is soon to enter various stages of production, with orders placed for aluminum shells for the company's next-generation 13-inch MacBooks and a manufacturer chosen for the iPhone's 3G chipset.

A worker at a Taiwanese case manufacturer posting to one of the Taiwan's largest technology forums claims (link withheld to protect identity) that his unnamed employer has just this week received orders to produce enclosures for new MacBook systems....

The report appears to corroborate AppleInsider's source information on the subject, echoing assertions that white cases will disappear from the MacBook lineup, replaced instead by a silver, anodized aluminum enclosures reminiscent of those used in the MacBook Air and latest iMacs.

My old PowerBook has led a tough life. I bought it a few years ago with the screen hanging off (broken hinges). Having successfully repaired the hinges and resprayed it (the paint was peeling of the Titanium) it was as good as new. However, after a few years of hard use everyday, it eventually developed a screen fault and collected some new knocks and scratches. It seemed a shame to throw out such a tough old machine because of a screen problem. So I decided to join the case modding fraternity.

The Safari 3.1.1 update includes a patch for the flaw that allowed the hijack of a MacBook Air laptop at the CanSecWest "PWN to OWN" security contest.

Apple has slapped a Band-Aid on its Safari for Windows browser to cover four vulnerabilities that could lead to code execution, cross-site scripting and URL spoofing attacks.

The Safari 3.1.1 update includes a patch for the flaw the allowed the hijack of a MacBook Air laptop at this year's CanSecWest "PWN to OWN" security contest.

For years, Microsoft Office was the undisputed champion of Mac software suites. Then came Apple's iWork. At first it consisted solely of Pages and Keynote - not enough to take on Office head-to-head. But when Apple added Numbers to iWork '08, the suite became a viable alternative to Microsoft Office.

How viable?....

The Great Laptop Battery Recall of 2006 had everyone paranoid that their MacBooks or ThinkPads could catch fire and cause havoc at any moment. Although that string of incidents appears to be over, the most commonly-found batteries can still catch fire under the right conditions. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Germany hope to eliminate that concern, though, by developing lithium-ion batteries with no flammable materials.....

According to ISC, the polymer is derived from an inorganic compound that allows organic side chains to attach to it, called Ormocer. The challenge, however, is to create a non-flammable polymer that retains its shape, but doesn't suffer when it comes to actually transmitting the energy....

Yesterday The Guardian did some ol' fashioned gum shoeing to find out more about the elusive yet seductive Psystar – the purported Mac cloner that many have been following. They found out that Psystar changed their address from what appeared to be an average row of suburban houses to a second address that "looks far more office-y, or at least industrial."

Well today Gizmodo's crack team of readers descended on both addresses and submitted photos of the locations for review......

Tom's Hardware has a brief interview with Psystar president Rudy Pedraza. In it he laughs about the whole thing, while still claiming it's legit.

Japan's Hitachi has dropped plans to sell a stake in its troubled computer disk drive business and aims to turn the business around by going after market share and cutting costs, the head of the unit said on Thursday.

Hitachi's determination to go it alone comes two days after Seagate Technology's outlook, hurt by price falls, missed expectations and sent its shares plummeting.

A new series of patent filings by Apple outlines attempts to modernize head-mounted displays (HMDs) that can be plugged into iPods or iPhones by decoupling the image generation components from the headsets themselves, which would pave the way for more lightweight and comfortable designs.

In the primary filing, the electronics maker notes that with most HMDs the displays and optics are typically embedded in the helmet, glasses, or a visor, which is worn by the user. However, this arrangement has several drawbacks.....

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