When Psystar, a Miami, Fla. company, started selling Mac clones pre-loaded with Mac OS X last month, everyone assumed that Apple would take immediate action. However, nothing has happened to date.

Several things may be going on, and no one is sure. Several theories are floating around.

Yesterday, Mac cloner announced a series of Software Updates for their Open Computer:

Safe updates, as well as bug fixes and workarounds, are now available in our Support section. We have released a couple of fixes for things like Time Machine as well as a fix for DHCP issues that some customers are having. Computers shipped as of today have all updates available preinstalled with Leopard. Please check our website regularly as we will begin releasing safe updates through the operating system's Automatic Updates and will require all of our existing users to download a small update manually and install it to enable this functionality.

If you're buying a computer to get onto the Internet, don't you think you'd be interested in a service that makes that computer much easier to use with the Internet?

At $99 a year, there aren't a lot of takers for Apple's .Mac online service....

Of course, Apple's financial performance isn't exactly hurting these days, so it's not like .Mac is a huge drain on the company. But the company is letting price get in the way of a service that could be a unique selling point for its hardware: the real profit engine at Apple....

A free .Mac service could be nothing more than a loss leader designed to sell Macs and iPhones. Apple clearly isn't making a ton of money anyway on .Mac, so the incremental revenue lost by making the service free might not even be noticed if that free service is used to sell Macs in greater numbers...

Grocery stores sell basic items like tuna fish and bread at razor-thin margins, because they know people are likely to pick up a few other things while they're at the market for the basics. Apple has an opportunity to do the same thing with .Mac, and it won't have to give away the store to make it happen.

The Fedora Project announces the third and final test release of the Fedora Core 6 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and ppc/ppc64 architectures, including Intel based Macintosh computers.

benefit Taiwan-based BLU maker Kenmos Technology, according to the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN).

Kenmos was Apple's main suppler for LED BLUs in 2007, according to the paper.....

Leopard sometimes can be a little reluctant to eject disks and disk images in the Finder. It doesn't matter if you click the Eject button in the Finder's sidebar, drag the disk to the Trash, or right-click and choose Eject, the Finder just silently ignores you. You can open Disk Utilty though and eject it fine that way (unless there are files open on the image, of course). This AppleScript will eject those troublesome disks....

Several users have experienced an issue in which an attached FireWire or USB drive will not eject. Instead, an error message pops up claiming the drive cannot be ejected because it is in use. This may occur with hard drives, flash drives, or any other storage system....

EBay finally flipped the switch on some of its feedback changes, which were announced back in January.

Effective today, merchants cannot leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers. Needless to say, sellers are outraged, leading to calls for a boycott.....

Various Macs' DVD drive can get exceptionally loud, especially when playing movies, even though it sounds like the fans and parts of the DVD drive are working normally (no odd clanking or buzzing noises). This problem appeared on some of the first PowerMac G5 and Mac Pro units (running Pioneer DVR-106 through DVR-111D drives), and seems to have persisted through to more recent systems running updated Pioneer DVR-112 drives.

Apple shares are getting hit hard in today's broad market selloff. While there are some minor news developments involving Apple - a lawsuit over the use of the phrase "Mighty Mouse," a report that the company will use LED backlit displays in future laptops - there's nothing obvious that would be pressuring the stock.

Time to pick up work on the Vintage Mac Network again - but a little different this time. I figured I'd make a series of article, writing about PowerBooks, compacts, and desktops in separate articles.

For now I'd like to talk about just one machine: The Quadra 610 server.

This baby is maxed nearly to the max with a PowerPC 601 upgrade, ethernet, a CD-ROM drive, 26 MB RAM (68 MB is the max), and, finally, an LCD monitor.

It primarily works as the server on my network, although I also use it for performing tasks just a bit too heavy for the 680x0 chips and, of course, web browsing.

You might wonder, "Is it really worth the effort and money to upgrade such an old machine?"

In my opinion, it is. With the PowerPC upgrade, this baby is as fast as Quadras get and never lets me down....

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