mac

Apple MacBook: Change is in the Air

The Apple MacBook Air has been a ground-breaking first-generation product (in my opinion). So, what will Apple do to top it when an update comes later this year? There are some telling indicators already. This is what I expect--and hope for--as a user.

First, a disclaimer. I am not an Apple fanatic. The MacBook Air is the first Apple product I have ever used for more than a few days. For well over a decade, I have been wedded to Wintel (Windows-Intel) laptops.

Before I dive into upcoming features, I should also mention that I have been extremely pleased with … Read more

My Mac problem: Too many and too alike

Here in the Asay home we have a growing problem: Each year we add a Mac to the fold, making it increasingly more difficult to tell them apart. My wife, eldest daughter, and I each have MacBook Pros. Soon, no doubt, my nine-year old son will get one. I love the way the Macs look, but it becomes a problem when they all look the same.

That's at home. Imagine what it's like at work, where we have scads of MacBook Pros.

Yes, we could litter the laptops with stickers, but that's a bit like sacrilege (though some disagree).… Read more

Looking back, looking ahead: The week in laptops

Ah, summer. Summer means long sunny days, vacations at the beach, and--if you're in the United States--the Independence Day holiday. Which is why this weekly wrap-up is coming a day early: tomorrow my colleagues and I will be busy eating grilled meat and watching fireworks, all in the name of patriotism.

Because it spans the middle months of the calendar, summer can also be a time of reflection. We took the opportunity this week to look back on all that's happened so far this year and came up with a list of notable notebooks from the first half of 2008. … Read more

Weekend project: Sync your .Mac bookmarks one last time

Are you a .Mac subscriber who's been using the built-in bookmark syncing app? Come Sunday that service will no longer exist as part of the MobileMe transition, so if you want to do one last sync you've got to get it done this weekend.

Shortly after the MobileMe announcement last month Apple sent out an e-mail to current .Mac subscribers detailing this change. Friday, the company extended the transfer deadline to July 6, along with providing a how-to guide to make sure you've got everything synced up one last time. You can get full instructions on how to do the sync here. … Read more

Apple cuts price of flash-drive MacBook Air

Updated 2 p.m. PDT Monday to clarify that Apple has cut the price of a MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive and faster processor by $500 total.

Apple has quietly reduced the price of the flash-memory version of the MacBook Air.

Appleinsider tipped us to the new price, which can be found at the online Apple Store. Before today, you would have paid a $999 premium if you wanted a MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive, but Apple has reduced that premium to $599. It's also now cheaper to upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to … Read more

The Mac approaches 8 percent market share: Is it ready for popularity?

In June, Apple's market share for Mac OS X hit 7.94 percent, according to Net Applications. At its current growth rate of 0.18 percent per month, this means that the Mac should claim 8 percent of the global desktop operating system market by the end of July. Linux, while still holding a tiny 0.8 percent share, is also rising.

The only major desktop OS to decline? Windows. In fact, as the Inquirer notes, while the Mac is up 32 percent, Windows XP actually declined a full percentage point while Vista scraped together a measly 2.56 percent. Overall? Windows was down 2.45 percent.

Mac sales are outpacing PC sales at 3.5 times faster rate. Two big questions are looming:

At what point will the momentum accelerate even faster? In other words, what's the tipping point for Mac adoption? Is Apple set up to handle this success? Does it want it?… Read more

Another day in IT paradise

It's amazing how, in the modern computing world, an average workday can go to hell with no apparent warning. Check this out.

I woke up this morning with the usual list of 30 things I needed to get done, knowing full well that I wouldn't get to most of them. Just another day in the working world, right? Not exactly.… Read more

Why does PDF support in Office for Mac 2008 stink so much?

Sometimes an "upgrade" is anything but. Take Mac for Office 2008. While it did introduce a number of improvements over its Office 2004 cousin, it has broken one of the most important functions that I regularly use on my Mac:

The ability to save a document/spreadsheet/etc. into a PDF.

This has long been a staple of the Mac experience. Whatever you are writing can easily be converted into a PDF. Office for Mac 2008 breaks this compact, however, by mindlessly crashing most times that I try to convert a document into PDF.

A colleague tells me … Read more

Apple patches 25 flaws with latest update

On Monday, Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.4. In addition to enhancements to existing features, Apple bundled in 13 specific security updates, including one for Safari 3.1.2. The security update APPLE-SA-2008-004 and Mac OS X 10.5.4 can be downloaded and installed from Apple Downloads.

Alias Manager This patch only affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.11 and Mac OS X Server v10.4.11. The update addresses an alias manager vulnerability described in CVE-2008-2308. According to Apple, a "memory corruption issue exists in the handling of AFP volume mount information in … Read more