Mac

Apple has apparently begun to acknowledge the existence of small white cracks in older plastic MacBooks, according to a report.

AppleInsider says Apple service providers started receiving notices last month that the plastic chassis on the white 13-inch MacBook released in 2006 can crack in four different spots. Apple had previously helped out users who had noticed hairline cracks around the trackpad on the top of the notebook, but did not acknowledge cracks in other places as a design flaw, according to AppleInsider.

Now the company is telling its service agents to inspect any white plastic MacBooks they receive for … Read more

Apple unveiled an updated version of its Xserve server Tuesday, adding Intel's latest server processors.

The Xserve is possibly the least-promoted product in Apple's lineup, but the company has certain educational and creative-professional customers that like to run a Mac OS X environment top to bottom. Still, the Xserve accounts for a fraction of Apple's revenue, although it caused a few problems for future iPod and iPhone chief Mark Papermaster upon his departure from IBM.

The new models come with the option of one or two of Intel's quad-core 2.26GHz Xeon processors and 3GB of … Read more

Apple has issued a fix for the graphics problems suffered by some owners of the company's new 17-inch MacBook Pro.

The firmware update was released Wednesday for owners of the MacBook Pro announced at Macworld and shipped in February. Some owners had reported problems with vertical lines polluting the display, and Apple says the new firmware should fix the problem.

Please let us know if you had any problems installing the update, or if the firmware update doesn't fix the problem. Based on the release notes for the firmware, it 's not clear whether this fix is related … Read more

What's the difference between a Mac and a PC?

According to comments reportedly made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: $500 and a logo.

Ballmer, according to a report in TechFlash, issued his fighting words during his keynote speech at Media Summit 2009 in New York.

When asked about Apple's market share growth in computers, Ballmer reportedly responded with a barb to his competitor, according to TechFlash:

Apple gained about one point, but now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction.

The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment … Read more

It's probably safe to assume that if they really do exist, Apple's marketing group doesn't plan on letting the iProd and iFPGA ever hit the market under those names.

As developers have gotten their hands on the iPhone OS 3.0 beta released earlier this week, they've started to turn up interesting tidbits while splashing around in the code. Ars Technica reports that an iPhone developer has uncovered references buried deep in the OS code to two possible Apple products: the iProd and the iFPGA.

For the uninitiated, it's possible to find references to Apple … Read more

Psystar has decided to not let a legal battle get in the way of its product road map.

The company introduced the Open(3) Wednesday, which as the name implies is the third model that Psystar has shipped with Mac OS X preinstalled. As you may also recall, Apple has not taken kindly to Psystar's decision to ship such a product, and the two companies are currently exchanging legal briefs and arguments over whether Psystar has a right to sell Open Computers with Mac OS X.

Psystar's Open(3) is basically the same product as the Open Computer that it replaces, … Read more

As expected, February was not a good month for Mac sales.

Piper Jaffray has analyzed a month's worth of NPD Group data on Apple's Mac sales during February, and is projecting that Apple will sell between 2 million and 2.2 million Macs during the first calendar quarter of the year, which ends in a couple of weeks. That's the same number it was working with based on January's NPD figures, and the estimates would range from a 13 percent decline to 4 percent decline compared to Mac shipments in Apple's first fiscal quarter of … Read more

Nvidia is again at the center of a graphics tempest in the media, this time surrounding performance issues of Apple's new 17-inch MacBook Pro. Two little pesky questions haven't been answered yet, however. Are Nvidia graphics chips really the problem? And are the issues really that widespread?

Postings in an Apple discussion forum cite a smorgasbord of problems: Some cite the Nvidia GeForce 9600M, while others point to issues with fan speed. Another post points to faulty wiring and another to the main processor (i.e., Intel). But this is just one forum. Does this really indicate widespread … Read more

Update at 8:52 a.m. PDT, with additional information from the research note and charts.

A Wall Street analyst on Monday lowered earnings estimates for Apple's fiscal second quarter and year, marking a second whack from a financial soothsayer in the past few days.

Doug Reid, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners, lowered Apple's fiscal second-quarter earnings estimates from $1.10 a share to $1.05 a share. Its fiscal second quarter ends in late March. For the fiscal year, Reid cut estimates from $5.31 a share to $5.10 a share, according to his research … Read more