Apple’s board of director, including CEO Steve Jobs, has a thorn in its collective side. That thorn comes in the form of the California Public Employee’s Retirement System (Calpers), one of the company’s largest shareholders. Calpers has announced that it will withhold its 1.48 million votes for Apple’s entire board of directors because the board…

For Mike Yrabedra, the word ‘fun’ has always been synonymous with ‘Macintosh’. "It started out to be a fun business and it just so happened that the Mac was really the nucleus of the whole idea." And so in 1997, Mr. Yrabedra started MacSurfShop.com to make Mac-related T-shirts. Today, the company is known as MacShirt.com…

BusinessWeek’s Alex Salkever says the jury is out on Apple’s retail store effort. This is partially in response to many in the Mac community gloating over Gateway’s decision to shut down its remaining 188 retail stores. Mr. Salkever says that not only should we not be so quick to judgement, but that Apple’s market share…

We reported earlier today that Gateway will be shuttering its fleet of retail stores on April 9th. The real question for Apple watchers, of course, is how does this reflect on Apple’s own retail stores. After all, when Apple first announced its stores, the immediate comparison from many, especially the doomsayers, was to Gateway’s stores.…

In the future, you may see widespread use of Power-based CPUs, but they won’t all be the same chip. According to IBM, future chips from the company will have the ability to be configured based on the needs of the customer. One processor could be optimized for use in anything from a supercomputer to a…

You may be wondering, after reading the title of this column, why I am answering mail after only having written five columns. That’s easy; I am very lazy, and these things just write themselves. Actually, I did receive quite a bit of feedback, and much to my surprise, most of it was positive. I even…

Matt Loney of ZDNet’s UK offices has penned an interesting editorial on the patent application we reported (in a scoop) last week. Mr. Loney questions whether or not Apple truly has anything original that it can properly patent, and he uses an old tit-for-tat story involving Microsoft, General Motors, and Apple to help illustrate his…

It’s early evening, and you are out for a stroll. You are so caught up in the euphoria from the music streaming from you iPod, and the soothing sight of a magnificent sunset, that you don’t notice that a shadowy figure has fallen in behind you. You turn onto a deserted path. From the corner…

Mac users tend to love their iPod minis, but what about Windows users? Forbes is addressing this question with an article looking at the iPod mini and its interaction with Windows. The article looks at the iTunes software, the iPod mini and its accessories, and more. From Forbes: Apple Computer’s iPod mini looks as if…

Apple has been somewhat circumspect about its re-entry into the enterprise and IT markets. Realizing it is the new kid on the block, and that the competition in these markets are already very well established, Apple made it clear from the beginning that it was feeling its way around, but that it was also very…

SxSW was originally a venue for independent artists and film makers to showcase their talents. Long ago, it became dominated by major labels, big Hollywood stars, and other powerful interests in the entertainment industry keen on using the event to promote their latest ventures. Perhaps the most fitting example of this is the fact that…

DVD-Audio, one of the two formats (the other being Super Audio CD, or SACD) vying to be the next-generation music format, will not be freely rippable like CDs are today. However, some discs will include a “DVD-ROM Zone” that is playable in a regular DVD player or DVD-ROM drive. This zone can be used to…