Apple

Apple's delay in shipping the 27-inch iMac may have more to do with the sheer volume of sales than any problems with the graphics chips, according to numbers from market research firm NPD.

(Credit: Apple)

Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, told CNET on Monday that for October and November, Mac desktop sales were up 74 percent over the same period last year. While NPD did not break the numbers down by desktop model, it's clear the iMac is a top seller.

In fact, the 27-inch iMac appears to be selling so well, it could account for the shipping delay that Apple apologized for on Sunday.

"It's not surprising Apple would be having problems supplying them [iMacs]," said Baker. "I can't imagine in their wildest dreams they would have thought they would sell like this."

Reports over the weekend suggested Apple was delaying shipments of the 27-inch iMac due to reported problems with the graphics card. While those issues remain, it may not be the root cause of the delay.

The surge in Mac sales was not limited to the 27-inch model. Baker said that the 21.5-inch iMac and the Mac mini are also doing very well.

Piper Jaffray financial analyst Gene Munster estimated in a research note to clients on Monday that Apple could sell 2.9 million to 3 million Macs for the current quarter, according to a report on AppleInsider. Munster cautioned that approximately 50 percent of all Mac sales for the quarter happen in December, so that number could change.

Mac notebooks saw a 5 percent increase for October and November, while iPod sales were down 11 percent year-over-year for the same time period.

Apple on Sunday apologized to customers amid reports of shipping delays of its recently introduced iMac computer.

(Credit: Apple)

"The new iMac has been a huge hit and we are working hard to fulfill orders as quickly as possible," an Apple spokesperson told CNET. "We apologize for any inconvenience or delay this may cause our customers."

Apple declined to comment on what's causing the delay, or if it's the display problems that have been widely reported in the last week. A support thread on Apple's Web site has 81 pages of comments and complaints from users with various iMac display issues.

Computerworld is reporting on a new Web site that has been setup by Web designer Scott Pronych to track the problems of the 27-inch iMac. The Web site tracks problems from flickering displays to hard drive failures and even has a category for those with no issues.

Pronych also has a Flash testing application on the site, allowing users to independently test their displays to see if there is a problem.

Currently, Apple's online store lists shipping times of two weeks for both 27-inch iMac models. The two 21-inch models ship within 24 hours. Online retailer MacMall appears to be out of 27-inch models, with a message to call for shipping dates. The 21-inch model at MacMall ships with next day shipping.

Apple did not say when iMac shipments would return to normal.

The beta version of Chrome for Mac OS X is available. Google released its browser beta for Linux too.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Two key pieces of Google's effort to make Chrome a more competitive browser fell into place on Tuesday as Google released beta versions of the browser for Mac OS X and Linux.

Tuesday's software release is a version of Chrome that had previously been available only as developer preview software for Mac and Linux machines. "It took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it," product manager Brian Rakowski said in a blog post.

Macs are widely used, if not as common as Windows machines, and there's been some demand in tech circles for the Mac version of Chrome. Linux, while less widely used among ordinary computer users, has importance of its own: it's the foundation for Chrome OS. That's the browser-based operating system Google hopes will be popular on Netbooks starting next year.

According to the Chromium development calendar, the beta versions are scheduled to graduate to the next level of maturity, "stable," on January 12. Chrome for Windows graduated out of beta almost exactly a year ago.

Google doesn't emphasize product version numbers in the project, instead automatically delivering updates behind the scenes to the browser that take effect when it's restarted. But it does use version milestones to keep track of development internally.

The biggest new feature of Chrome 4.0 is support for extensions, which let people customize the browser. In the Mozilla world, they're called add-ons, and they've been a big part of Firefox's success.

Mac OS X has a mandatory menu bar, so unlike the Windows version, Chrome on the Mac has traditional menus.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Extensions aren't useful, though, unless people can find them. Google on Tuesday also launched a Chrome extensions gallery page.

There are more than 300 extensions available for Chrome, extensions programmers Aaron Boodman and Erik Kay said in a blog post.

However, extensions on the Mac aren't yet available, though they had been for a time in the developer-preview version. "Extensions aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet, but you will be able to preview them on a developer channel soon," Rakowski said.

Also on the Chrome for Mac to-do list: a bookmark manager, PDF viewing in the browser, bookmark synchronization, 64-bit support, and my personal favorite differentiator of Firefox 3.6 on the Mac, full-screen support.

Chrome now has an extensions gallery.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Why try Chrome?
For those of you new to Chrome, here's a brief version of why it's my default browser on both Windows and, as of about a month ago, Mac OS X. Your preferences and needs may vary, of course, and I still use Firefox every day, too.

• Speed. It's fast to start up, though not quite as snappy as it once was now that it's not so bare-bones, and rivals are making progress. It's also fast loading Web pages and running JavaScript programs on them.

• Tabs. I spawn innumerable new tabs all day long, and when it takes a long time (I'm looking at you, Internet Explorer), I get infuriated. I also like the order in which new tabs arrive, a style Firefox is mimicking.

• The omnibox. It's a single bar that merges the utility of an address bar and search bar. I hit Ctrl-L (on Windows) or Command-L (on Mac) to pop my cursor up there, and start typing. One nice--if somewhat obscure--feature is fast site search on some domains, so for example I can type A, M, tab, and up pops an Amazon.com icon; what I type afterward is entered as a search on Amazon. That conveniently gets me straight to the search results so I don't have to see yet another Kindle ad.

• A minimal user interface. When browsing, I like my user interface to step aside and make way for the Web page. Scrolling was a wonderful innovation in computers a few decades ago, but I like to avoid it when I can. Chrome puts tabs in the real estate ordinarily devoted to a program's title bar and shuffles the menu controls off to the right of that tab strip (though the Mac version gets a regular menu bar).

Another potential perk: avant-garde Web technology, including WebGL and O3D for accelerated 3D graphics and Native Client for speeding up Web apps with direct access to a processor, are being built into Chrome. Another such Google project, Gears, is already built into Chrome--though Gears doesn't work on Mac OS X 10.6.

There are things you might miss--the full panoply of Firefox extensions, toolbars from Google or others, print preview. And the "browser not supported" error messages on various Web pages are annoying, though in my experience there's rarely an actual compatibility problem. Overall, I like it.

Is Google spying on me?
If you're worried about what new data Google will be able to harvest on you, I recommend a close read of Google's Chrome privacy page. This doesn't worry me much, but I may be insufficiently paranoid. In my opinion, the biggest thing is that Google stores 2 percent of the data it gathers when people type text into Chrome's combination search and address bar, called the omnibox.

That means Google can see not only what you're searching for (as it would for any Google search), but what Web site addresses you're typing as well. The data is anonymized within 24 hours, Google said.

Also, Chrome has a feature called DNS pre-fetching that tracks down the Internet server addresses on Web pages in anticipation that you'll be clicking links on the page. So Chrome--and Google, too, if you're using Google Public DNS--retrieves this information from the Internet.

Updated at 12:30 p.m. PST and 1:20 p.m.. Added further detail.

Apple products have topped the list of the most popular computers sold in U.S retail in October, an analyst for market research firm NPD Group told CNET on Friday.

(Credit: Apple)

The recently introduced 21-inch iMac was the top-selling desktop for the month, Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, said in an interview. Apple's high-end iMac 27-inch model took the No. 3 spot in the desktop category, he said.

"Apple gets a bounce whenever they come out with new computers," Baker said. "For the most part, October was a down month on the Windows side because [PC manufacturers] were working through inventory before the Windows 7 launch."

The company also took the top spot in the notebook category in October, with the $1,199 MacBook Pro, Baker said. Overall, Apple took 4 out of the top 10 positions for notebooks in U.S. retail for the month, according to Baker. In addition to the top-seeded MacBook Pro, Apple also secured the 8, 9, and 10 positions.

"[The $1,199 MacBook Pro has] always been a great seller," Baker said. "It's priced pretty aggressively for Apple, but to some extent, it also benefited from the same slowdown on the Windows side."

NPD has not released an official report on the sales data, and Baker declined to give CNET a rundown of the other computers in NPD's top-10 lists for desktop and notebook retail sales in the United States in October. It is important to note that while the NPD data includes online and retail stores, it does not factor in direct sales.

Sales of computers in October were obviously very good for Apple, but Baker doesn't feel that the so-called "halo effect" from the iPhone or iPod is what is driving sales. Rather, he points to the overall consumer experience.

"Over past few years, Apple has continued to gain share in the market, and there are a lot of ways to explain that," Baker said. "It could be the stores, the computers themselves, the iPod, or iPhone. I think it's a combination of all those things."

Apple on Friday quietly updated its high-end Mac Pro computer with an option for a faster processor.

(Credit: Apple)

First noted by AppleInsider, the 3.33GHz quad-core Intel Xeon option will add $1,200 to the price of the base configuration, which currently sells for $2,499. An option for the 2.93GHz processor, introduced in March, is still available for an extra $400 over the base model.

The current Mac Pro base configuration ships with a 2.66GHz quad-core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor.

The custom configuration options for the Mac Pro also enable buyers to add up to 16GB of RAM, as many as four 2-terabyte hard drives, and a variety of graphics cards, in additional to other components and software.

When it introduced the Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro in March, Apple added options for the Nvidia GeForce GT 120 and the ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics cards, as well as three channels of memory designed to cut latency by up to 40 percent on the machines.

While Apple's iMac and Mac Mini are recognized by most consumers for their design, the Mac Pro is the machine of choice by many IT, graphics, and audio pros for its superior power.

Although a judge recently ruled in favor of Apple in its copyright infringement case against Psystar, the two companies have reached a new settlement, according to Computerworld and other reports.

Details are sketchy at this point, and there's no confirmation from Apple, but Psystar claimed in a motion filed Monday that a partial settlement has been reached.

"Psystar has agreed on certain amounts to be awarded as statutory damages on Apple's copyright claims in exchange for Apple's agreement not to execute on these awards until all appeals in this matter have been concluded," noted Psystar's motion filed in federal court in San Francisco. "Moreover, Apple has agreed to voluntarily dismiss all its trademark, trade-dress, and state-law claims. This partial settlement eliminates the need for a trial and reduces the issues before this Court to the scope of any permanent injunction on Apple's copyright claims."

Psystar also seems to be looking for a loophole against any injunctions. Apple had asked the court to prevent Psystar from selling clones not just with Leopard, but also Snow Leopard, which was released after the lawsuit began. But in its filing, Psystar argued that it should be allowed to sell its Rebel EFI utility, which lets customers install Snow Leopard on clones sold by the company, thus moving the legal burden away from Psystar.

Psystar's motion also indicated that another motion with further details would be filed Tuesday with Judge William Alsup.

Apple's lawsuit against Psystar began in July 2008 after Psystar started selling Mac clones with OS X installed on them. Apple has argued that its end user license lets people install its operating system on Apple computers only.

On November 13, Alsup ruled in favor of Apple, finding that Psystar's use of OS X on its clones was not "fair use" as the company contended and further finding that Psystar violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by "circumventing Apple's protection barrier."

Since then, Apple has been keen to shut down Psystar's Mac clone business permanently, calling for an injunction against the company and potentially millions of dollars in damages, substantially more money than the clone maker has.

Alsup's findings and Apple's fervor in going after Psystar raise the question of why Apple would agree to any kind of settlement at this point. A hearing was set for December 14, with a full trial scheduled to start in January. But if the latest news from Psystar is true, then the company may be able to avoid further courtroom drama.

Neither Psystar nor Apple has responded to requests for comment. We'll provide further details of this latest development as court documents become available.

Update 2: Apple's U.S. Black Friday sale is up, and while not spectacular, there are some rare discounts to be found. To go back to the same examples we used for the U.K. and Australian Apple stores, the base model 13-inch MacBook Pro is $1,098, down from $1,199.

In fact, it looks like all MacBook Pro models are exactly $101 off, while the $999 white MacBook is not discounted at all. The 32GB iPod Touch is $268, down from $299.

This sale is good online and in Apple's retail stores and runs until 3 a.m. EST on November 28.

Update: Even though it's not quite Black Friday in the U.S. yet, it's past midnight in some other parts of the globe. Notably, Australia and the U.K. have both seen their respective Apple Web sites updated to reveal Apple's one-day sale. While we can't say yet that the deals in the U.S. will be exactly the same, there's no reason think they won't be.

On apple.com/uk, we saw a 13-inch MacBook Pro, originally £1,149, marked down to £1,078. On apple.com/au, the same unit was A$1,868, marked down from A$1,999.

Similarly, a 32GB iPod Touch is £208, marked down from £229 on the U.K. site, while while in Australia, it's A$358, down from A$399.

We've also examined some Black Friday deals from other retailers.

Our original post continues below:

According to purportedly leaked documents on the tech rumor site Boy Genius Report, Apple is gearing up to offer a series of post-Thanksgiving bargains on products from iPods to MacBooks.

The deal, allegedly good only on November 27, lists "up to" discounts of 30 percent on iPods (excluding the Shuffle and iPhone), 25 percent on Mac laptops and desktops, and 15 percent on accessories, software, and other hardware.

The Boy Genius Report Web site says: "One of our connects just hit us up with some intriguing Apple information. According to them, what you see detailed above is a shot of Apple's yearly Black Friday deals. It's reported to be something Apple will email out shortly."

Of course, with the vague use of "up to" and no specific products listed, we can't be sure if these will be good deals or not. But if you're interested in being the first in line to check them out, the leaked doc also says that select Apple stores will be opening at 6 a.m. on November 27.

(Credit: Boy Genius Report)

I have nothing against smoking, save for the difficult odor that emanates from every part, breath, and piece of clothing belonging to a smoker. I could no more live with a smoker than I could live with a third ear perched off the end of my nose.

However, I am embalmed in a curious sympathy after reading a report from The Consumerist concerning two Mac users whose AppleCare warranties appear to have been voided due to the presence of cigarette smoke in their homes.

One, named Derek, recounts the tale of his overheating black MacBook. He took it into the Apple store in Jordan Creek, West Des Moines.

He told The Consumerist: "Today, April, 28, 2008, the Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there was smoking, that has voided the warranty and they refuse to work on the machine, due to 'health risks of secondhand smoke.'"

He continued: "Nowhere in your AppleCare terms of service can I find anything mentioning being used in a smoking environment as voiding the warranty."

Will a Marlboro Lights habit makes this cute thing inoperable?

(Credit: CC Galaygobi/Flickr)

Derek's resulting appeal to the office of Steve Jobs bore him no joy, so he resorted to blowing some compressed air at the machine, leading it to restart its wondrous functions.

Then along came Ruth, who took her son's iMac to an authorized repair center. After five days, they apparently told her they couldn't work on it because it was contaminated with cigarette smoke and was therefore a bio-hazard.

Is Apple an enterprise software or hardware company? That's the question Gartner's Nick Jones asks, ultimately answering with "you have to have a pretty relaxed definition [of enterprise] before Apple fits it."

"Enterprise" is defined by the company you keep.

With this definition in mind, Apple clearly fits the "enterprise" moniker, whether Apple wants it or not. As BusinessWeek reported back in 2008, the Mac is finding its way into enterprise computing, with or without the IT department's blessing. Ditto the iPhone.

Is it somehow less enterprise because the CIO didn't issue a policy giving permission?

Maybe "enterprise" means something more than "gets used a lot within the enterprise." In fact, Jones points out a few reasons he, personally, doesn't feel Apple is an enterprise vendor:

Apple does the bare minimum for enterprises, they aren't deeply committed to security, management, road maps, low TCO and so on. And they don't open up the architecture of iPhone enough for third parties to fill the holes.

But, again, is this really how we should define "enterprise?"

It reminds me of the criticisms leveled at open-source software early in its adoption. Originally Linux, for example, wasn't considered "enterprise grade" or "enterprise ready," presumably because it didn't meet Jones' hurdles above.

Now, however, Linux is considered an essential enterprise technology. What changed? Nothing...except adoption.

Here's a test for Jones: while Gartner pooh-poohs Apple's iPhone as an enterprise mobile device, perhaps for a variety of good definitional reasons, will it hold to such a rationale once the iPhone's market share within the enterprise dwarfs that of Windows Mobile, which has lost a third of its market share since 2008?

Seriously, at some point it won't be enough to listen to Microsoft's Ray Ozzie deprecate the iPhone's enterprise credentials because its 100,000-plus applications are "not very deep" and lack the "thousands of man years" that have gone into the applications that run on Windows. It won't make sense. Why? Because no matter how "enterprise grade" those Windows Mobile applications are, few within the enterprise are using them.

Enterprise is as enterprise does. Would you rather work for the company that builds software for the enterprise, or would you prefer to work for the company whose software gets used by the enterprise?

If you can have both, great. But it's silly to say Apple isn't an enterprise company simply because it sells to the enterprise without even trying.