DAT

Do you remember when Sony was Apple?

There was a time when Sony was the first name in consumer electronics. The company's Trinitron TVs dominated the TV market for decades. In 1975, Sony's Betamax was the first widely adapted consumer video recorder format. The Walkman hit the market in 1979 and changed the way people listened to music, creating the personal audio market category. In 1982 the CD, which the company developed jointly with Philips, changed the way we listened to music even more. Sony extended its reach when it purchased CBS Records in 1988 and Columbia Pictures in 1989, and scored a triumph in … Read more

Apple may build data center in Oregon

Apple is reportedly considering beefing up its data center muscle by building a new facility in central Oregon.

The tech giant is exploring the possibility of constructing a 31-megawatt data center on 160 acres near Prineville, Ore., people familiar with the matter tell The Oregonian. The company, which is negotiating with the city under the code name "Maverick," is expected to make a decision this month on whether to purchase the property, the newspaper reports. The property is owned by Crook County and is about a quarter mile south of where Facebook opened a server farm last year, … Read more

McAfee to compensate home users for bad update

McAfee is promising to reimburse home customers hit by last Wednesday's faulty virus update, which hosed tens of thousands of computers.

Facing complaints and questions from people whose PCs crashed or kept rebooting as a result of the buggy update, McAfee formally apologized in an official blog last Friday. But now the company has gone a step further.

McAfee is committing to reimburse home and home office customers for any money they spent to fix their PCs as a result of the problem. Details are sketchy now, but the company is hoping people will sit tight for a few … Read more

McAfee apologizes for antivirus update disaster

It's been a rough week for McAfee, but an even rougher one for many of its customers.

Acknowledging the chaos it caused by pushing out a buggy antivirus update on Wednesday, McAfee apologized to its customers in the form of a late-night blog on Thursday.

Barry McPherson, executive vice president of support and customer service, issued the apology on behalf of McAfee, saying the company was sorry for the headaches it caused for so many customers.

At 6 a.m. PDT Wednesday, the company released a faulty update to its antivirus software that hosed computers running Windows XP with … Read more