Mac

I just made my New Year’s Resolution and so far I am doing great. I recently got a new 20 inch iMac G5 and I resolved to not rub it in other peoples’ faces. That’s right, I got a new iMac, son! What do you have, a Commodore 64, or maybe a Timex Sinclair with…

When Rob Steerum of Fulcrum Global Partners asked Tim Cook, Apple’s VP of Worldwide Sales and Operations, about the chances of a G5-based PowerBook anytime soon, Mr. Cook admitted Wednesday such a project “would be the mother of all thermal challenges.” When asked if he meant there will never be a G5-powered PowerBook, Mr. Cook…

It’s a brand new year; 2005, that means it’s time for a fresh round of speculation about what our good friend and Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, will show off at the San Francisco Macworld Expo. Last May I wrote a piece that examined the likelihood of Apple popping out what I called an Econo-Mac; this…

AudioGoGo.com has published its predictions for 2005, where, as we have seen with other tech media outlets, Apple figured prominently. The magazine had five major predictions concerning Apple, including Apple having a big year for the Mac, Apple losing iPod market share, Apple upgrading the audio quality of the iTunes Music Store, and the Sony…

Anyone interested in serious genealogy research, or anyone who just wants to create a good family tree, may be interested in checking out an application called MacFamilyTree. This particular application has three things going for it:  It was created for the Mac platform, it is relatively inexpensive, and it is fairly easy for a beginner…

John C. Dvorak has a new column about Apple in which he said "the Mac platform is essentially stagnant." The problem, according to Mr. Dvorak, is "Apple’s inability to make the Mac a commodity computer by pricing it to compete with PCs made inexpensively in China and selling with razor-thin margins." In other words, Mr.…

If you got a new Mac for Christmas or Chanukah, you better hang on to this. Everyone knows how well-built our Macs are and how long they last. Well, OK, everyone who uses a Mac knows. Anyhow, those of us "in the know" know that when we get a new Mac, we have left a…

The end of the year inevitably brings with it scores of “Best of” lists from a variety of sources. Such lists from this year frequently have Apple’s iPod at or near the top, but Apple also made another kind of list this year: PC Magazine’s “Worst Products of the Year” list, where the eMac was…

War Driving just got easier: MacWireless has released a keychain-sized WiFi finder called MacWireless WiFinder. WiFi finders can detect open WiFi networks, and MacWireless says that its unit can "distinguish between a wireless network and other devices that produce the same frequency, such as a cordless phone or a microwave oven." In addition, the device’s…

Local Austin Filmmaker and Canadian National Craig Knapp just recently finished post-production on a DV film he directed titled; "The Sum of Jobe". I took a few moments to ask Craig a few questions about the project, and how the Mac was instrumental in the film’s production. TMO: So tell us about the story and…

The open-source Web browser Firefox 1.0 for Mac was downloaded over 170,000 times in the first two days, The Mozilla Foundation told The Mac Observer Thursday, making it one of the most successful launches of a shareware product in recent memory. Of the over two million total downloads of Firefox 1.0, 8.2% were downloads of…

Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich raised many of his unit estimates Tuesday on a handfull of Apple Computer products, pointing to better than expected demand and supplier component availability. In a research comment to clients, Mr. Milunovich said demand for Mac laptops is strong. “We are raising our December laptop numbers from 500,000 to 600,000,”…

Did he say it or did he not? He did not, according to a Google spokesman. We’re talking about comments reportedly made by Google, Inc. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt last Friday in which a Reuters reporter claims he said the search engine company would definitely release a Mac version of its Google Desktop indexing…

Worms and viruses have been featured a lot in the news of late. Of course, that’s nothing new, but what is new is the types of virus-related stories that are appearing: The Bagel virus — this one a variation of the original theme — is spreading, stories from IT security experts warning of a new…

Preface: I work in a place where mentioning Macs makes people crinkle their noses as if someone had just out-gassed after eating egg salad. The arguments for their Mac aversion are as tired as their expressions; most opinions are hold-overs from the days of Apple’s single digit OSes. When I set about explaining that OS…

Jef Raskin is as rascally today as he was more than 20 years ago when he fought to get his idea for a new computer through Apple’s management. That computer was the Macintosh, if not the Macintosh that was eventually brought to market, for Steve Jobs took over Mr. Raskin’s project, and effectively pushed him…

My other column, Dr. Mac, runs every Tuesday in the Houston Chronicle. Writing for the newspaper is a lot different from writing for The Mac Observer (TMO). The newspaper column is the same length-roughly 500 words-every week; TMO columns can be as long or as short as the subject requires. Newspaper columns don’t have screen…

I recently started working for a new client in the publishing industry. My job is to help the IT manager, who is versed in the ways of Windows, keep about ten Macs running smoothly in the company’s production area. Now, the IT manager is a good guy, and to protect his identity I will refer…

Fortune magazine’s Peter Lewis is the latest to talk up Apple’s new iMac G5. In a review titled “Apple All-In-One Is One For Almost All,” Mr. Lewis offers the now-familiar praise for the iMac G5’s design, looks, display, speed, etc. He also criticizes the 64 MB video card Apple included in the unit as “paltry,”…