mac

With little fanfare, Netflix previewed a feature many Mac users have wanted to see for quite some time.

A little tidbit tucked away at the bottom of a blog entry posted in the wee hours of the morning proclaims that the movie rental company will make its "Watch now" service work on Macs by the end of this year.

Separately, the company announced that it has forged a deal with Starz that adds 2,500 movies and TV shows to its streaming library.

Netflix still has a long way to go before its instant viewing library can compare … Read more

Claims that Apple's Mac Pros emit benzene are being denied by the company.

A French newspaper called Libération.fr published the results of a study by a researcher at France's INERIS claiming that odors stemming from certain Mac Pros are the result of benzene emissions. Complaints have surfaced in the past about some sort of weird odor coming from Mac Pros, but it was thought the odor was related to small strips of plastic or material around the heatsink on the processor, depending on where you looked.

The study claims that the benzene fumes won't … Read more

Nick Carr points to university data that suggests good reasons to host e-mail, but the data from the IT department at Amherst College is much more telling about a clear and present danger to Microsoft's enterprise dominance: students prefer Apple, and particularly for an area of traditional weakness for Microsoft, mobile devices.

Even as analysts suggest that Apple is in for a slowdown, the company's progress with today's students and tomorrow's employees is outstanding, suggesting that now may be time to stick with Apple, not dump the crop:

Microsoft plans to continue charging handset makers licensing fees for use of its Windows Mobile operating system, not responding to the free offerings of Google and Nokia, Reuters reports.

Microsoft charges $8 to $15 per phone, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, which sounds shockingly high for a mobile operating system that's less than stellar, especially when a handset maker could incorporate the decent (but not great) operating system from Google, Android, for free.

While there is no current economic reason for Microsoft to make Windows Mobile free, it seems like an odd choice when mobile competitors Research In … Read more

AOL on Monday quietly released a brand-new version of its instant-messenger application for Mac users. Called "AIM for Mac beta 1," it's a replacement for version 4.7, which has remained untouched since February 2004.

Back then gas was a little over $1.50 a gallon.

Unlike the changes in oil prices, those four years have amounted to little more than what was offered in previous iterations of the program, or Apple's iChat application which comes pre-installed in every Mac computer. In the new version users can change emoticon sets and tweak background chat wallpapers--all things … Read more

Google has released an open-source software project called Update Engine that programmers can use to keep their Mac OS X software up to date.

"Update Engine can update all the usual suspects, like Cocoa apps, preference panes, and screensavers. But it can also update oddballs like arbitrary files, and even things that require root--like kernel extensions. On top of that, it can update multiple products as easily as it can update one," Greg Miller, a programmer on the update engine team, said in a blog posting Monday.

The Update Engine project is hosted at Google's open-source site. … Read more

By now you've probably heard the rumors that Apple is having an event on October 14, where Steve Jobs will introduce new Apple laptops to the world. At this point, it's unclear whether the lines will be refreshed with new processors and configurations, or whether we'll see a more substantial redesign to the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Then there's the big secondary question of what's going on with the MacBook Air.

Read the full column here.

Apple's shares fell 17.5 percent in early trading Monday, as two noted brokerage firms scaled back their recommendations to a "hold" from a "buy."

Apple fell as low as $105.77 a share in intraday trading, down substantially from its close of $128.24 on Friday. Apple's shares sold off sharply after Morgan Stanley and RBC Capital Markets downgraded the stock.

Morgan Stanley not only revised its recommendation for the stock, but also lowered its fiscal 2009 earnings estimate to $5.47 a share from $5.91 a share.

In listing its reasons … Read more

October 2008

Later this week, I'm off for a trip to Japan. I never go anywhere without my iPhone anymore. Japan will be no exception. But I will be taking the phone with some trepidation. Knowing that international charges can be exorbitant, I've spent a good deal of time determining what, if anything, I could do to keep costs to a minimum. To save you from having to do the same legwork, here's what I learned:

Q. What's the executive summary?

A. The cheapest thing you can do, by far, is leave your phone … Read more