Mac

This post was updated at 10:45 a.m. PDT with information from court filings.

Psystar, maker of the the Open Computer, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The papers were filed in a Florida federal court Thursday. Psystar is more than $250,000 in debt, according to the bankruptcy petition, owed mostly to shipping companies, the IRS, and the law firm Carr & Farrell.

In the filing, Psystar pins its financial mess on the poor economy.

"Debtor sales have been greatly affected by the decrease in consumer spending. The financial crisis has also caused creditors to tighten up their … Read more

The Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts CES in Las Vegas every year, said Thursday that the trade show will expand its Apple section from 4,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet.

It's called the iLounge Pavilion and will be an exhibition area for products related to the Mac, iPod, and iPhone. This year, for the first time, there will also be a section for applications for use on Apple products.

The original 4,000-square-foot space sold out within days of the announced availability to retailers, developers, and accessory makers looking to exhibit their wares and services, according … Read more

This was originally published at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Apple is likely to launch a tablet that's similar to the iPod Touch, but larger, in the first half of 2010, marking the company's entry into the Netbook race, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says.

In a research note Thursday, Munster handicaps the gaps in Apple's product lineup. The gaping hole: there's nothing between the iPod Touch and the MacBook. Enter this iPod Touch on steroids for $500 to $700.

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook called Netbooks junky, but he never dismissed the consumer demand … Read more

RussianMac is the latest company to release a Mac clone and test Apple's resolve to stop companies from selling its operating system.

On its Web site, RussianMac says that a full version of Mac OS X Leopard comes pre-installed on its computers. The company also confirms that the operating system is able to receive automatic system updates from Apple once installed.

This is where Apple seems to have the clone makers over a barrel. Apple's Mac OS X End User License Agreement (EULA) clearly forbids anyone from installing the software on hardware not sold by Apple. This effectively … Read more

Is Wal-Mart flirting with Apple? That's what one analyst believes is behind the retailer's newly beefed-up electronics section that's being rolled out over the next few weeks.

The world's largest retailer by revenue is doing a splashy makeover of its tech section, but there are many reasons behind the move: By building up its high-definition TV and Blu-ray home theater offerings, Wal-Mart is looking to pick up where the now-defunct Circuit City stores left off. There are also a couple of new smart phones debuting soon, including the much-anticipated Palm Pre, which Palm said Tuesday would … Read more

Just like February, April was a gloomy month for Apple retail sales of Macs and iPods, according to data gathered by the NPD Group.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster analyzed the monthly data from NPD's April roundup of Apple sales. He said in a research note Monday that April Mac sales were down 1.8 percent from a year ago. Assuming similar patterns for May and June, that should lead to total quarterly sales of 2.1 million to 2.3 million Macs, which would be an 8 percent to 16 percent decline in unit growth, he writes. If … Read more

An Apple job posting suggests the company might be thinking about adding 3G wireless radios to future MacBooks.

Apple's Mac Hardware Group is looking for a quality-assurance engineer with experience in the various networking technologies popular in the personal computing market, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, "and/or 3G Wireless WAN," according to the job posting spotted by Computerworld. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet are the standard network interfaces on the Mac at the moment, while 3G Wireless WAN is a technology confined just to the iPhone inside Apple.

A few years ago, notebooks with embedded chips that could … Read more

Apple could be getting ready to cut prices on iMacs and MacBooks, according to a report.

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple plans to introduce less-expensive versions of its two most popular Macs at some point over the next several months. It's not clear how much of a cut Apple has in mind, or whether it plans to offer more value at current prices, but Apple has apparently decided that it wants to hedge its bets against a proliferation of cheap Netbooks over the last year or so, according to the report.

Mac pricing has certainly been a big topic over the last several months, as Microsoft has aggressively pushed the notion of the Mac as an expensive bauble unfit for recessionary spending. Apple responded to those ads with its standard message that Macs are more capable than PCs, therefore PCs aren't quite the bargain they appear to be.

This move, if it comes to pass, would therefore represent a change in Apple's strategy of positioning the Mac as a premium experience. Apple did cut the price of the MacBook last year, keeping an older system around for $999 while introducing the new unibody MacBooks in October. The company also lowered the cost of acquiring certain features previously reserved for the high end of its notebook line, which to some extent has a similar effect to a price cut.

Times have changed since then.… Read more

Apple Insider has unearthed proof that YouTube uploading will be built into the upcoming version of QuickTime that ships with OS X 10.6.

According to beta testers, several video-sharing options will be baked into the latest release of Apple's QuickTime media playback and editing software, including the capability to directly upload to YouTube. With the new QuickTime, you will be able to convert and upload any supported video file type to the online video service and all you will need is to be a registered YouTube user. You also will be able to seamlessly upload supported video to … Read more