mac

This week in Crave: Skivvies, Macs, and fake eyeballs

Sure, PMA was lots of fun, but there was plenty of other stuff going on here at Crave this week. Here's some of the best and some of the worst.

• We took a look at the new 24-inch iMacs from Apple--and liked what we saw.

• We brought you news of "trashy" lingerie made from recycled materials. We won't tell if you click.

• Strangely, it seems Amazon wants to help the iPhone be the Kindle killer with its own Kindle app. It works, but there's some strangeness.

• We can rebuild him: Meet the quasi-bionic eye camera. … Read more

Flat people of Multiwinia! Fight!

Multiwinia is a frantic, fast-paced real-time strategy game in which armies of "bloodthirsty little stick men" duke it out in epic battles across a Tron-like landscape. The game shares the same retro, silly aesthetic as its solo-campaign predecessor Darwinia--with graphics and sound effects that are simultaneously savage and whimsical--but the gameplay is definitely geared toward multiple players (AIs or online opponents), with over 40 different maps and six game types that will feel familiar to multiplayer fans: Domination, King of the Hill, Capture the Statue, Assault, Rocket Riot, and Blitzkrieg. Veterans of the RTS genre may find the … Read more

Apple's new higher-end Mac Mini reviewed; 20-inch iMac review still to come

As promised, we just published our in-depth look at the 2.0GHz, 320GB Mac Mini. The last 20-inch iMac is also on its way, so keep checking back for more updates. In the meantime, don't forget to check out our slide show below for a quick tour of the systems in our lab:

Read the CNET review of the higher-end Mac Mini.

Read the CNET review of the entry-level Mac Mini.

Read the CNET review of the 24-inch iMac.

Apple analyst lowers estimates, shares fall

Correction, 11:06 a.m. PST: This story initially misstated the day the report was released. It was Friday.

Update at 10:31 a.m. PST, with more information from the analyst report and a chart.

A J.P. Morgan analyst cut his financial estimates for Apple's fiscal second quarter and fiscal 2009 on Friday, pointing to expectations that its iPhone and Mac sales may be weaker than previously anticipated.

Apple fell as low as 7.3 percent in early morning trading Friday to $82.33 a share.

"We are lowering our estimates for the March quarter and … Read more

Multiwinia released for Mac

Last week I wrote a post about a great deal from Ambrosia Software, which has now sadly lapsed. But the the silver lining to that cloud is that with the end of the sale comes the release of an all-new Mac game: Multiwinia!!

Multiwinia is a ferociously fun real-time strategy game with cool stylistic graphics and challenging gameplay. Those of you who have played Darwinia, also from Ambrosia, will recognize the scenery at once, but that's where the similarity ends.

Multiwinia is a geometrically-shaped 3-D land populated by the two-dimensional stick men from Darwinia, except now they're not … Read more

Apple helps Microsoft get Windows 7 right

"When you strike at a king, you must kill him," said the great Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Apple, in toying with but not killing Microsoft in enterprise computing, has unwittingly granted its rival a new lease on life with Windows 7.

At least, that's the position Likewise CEO Barry Crist is taking in a recent blog post. In some ways, Crist depends upon neither Apple nor Microsoft killing off the other, as his company makes audit and authentication solutions that span different operating systems: Mac OS X, Windows, Unix, and Linux.

The company also makes awesome T-shirts, … Read more

On PostSecret tour, a WoW confession

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.--There probably aren't very many people in the world who could inspire someone to stand up in front of a crowd of 800 strangers and admit to a World of Warcraft addiction.

It might sound like a joke, but in the case of Frank Warren, the founder and curator of the ongoing PostSecret project, people are always baring their souls to him, either via the privacy of an anonymous postcard or letter, or in the case of his many public speaking engagements, in front of hundreds, or even thousands, of people they've never met before. … Read more

Apple Snow Leopard plus Nvidia equals what?

Nvidia is in at Apple. So, what's the connection between Apple's graphics-fortified lineup and Snow Leopard OS X?

First a quick canvass of the state of Apple's graphics. Low-performance Intel integrated graphics have been booted from MacBooks, replaced by Nvidia. And, earlier this week, Apple updated the iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro with Nvidia graphics across the board and didn't mince words on its Web site: "Ultrafast Nvidia graphics" ad copy is prominently displayed for the iMacs. ATI graphics are also promoted for the Mac Pro and offered on the iMac.

Then, there'… Read more

Final verdict on $599 Mac Mini: That don't impress me much

After taking a hard look at the $599 Mac Mini, our OS-neutral assessment of the refresh is that its onboard features and performance benchmarks don't stack up to other budget PCs on the market, where you can spend $100 less and pick up a PC like the Acer Aspire X1700-U3700A, which provides a faster CPU clock speed, three times more RAM, and more than five times the storage space, not to mention a variety of superior internal expansion opportunities.

Apple's push toward environmental efficiencies deserves a shout-out here. Both of the new Mac Minis adhere to Energy Star'… Read more