MacUser

Zune hits 2m sales, still way, way short of iPod sales

2008-05-09T21:22:55Z

Microsoft revealed that it has sold two million of their funny little Zune players since their launch in November '06. This shows a relatively flat growth, and a small gain in their overall US marketshare from three, to a whopping four percent. Great job, boys. Have a coffee break.

Apple, in the meantime, has sold 10.6 million iPods in its latest quarter. If one does the math, that means that Apple has moved more than five times the amount of MP3 players in the last quarter than Microsoft has moved in the last year and a half. Coffee break's over, boys; time to learn how to innovate.

I still don't understand how such an insanely wealthy company like Microsoft can't seem to innovate half as well as Apple. You'd think that having billions of dollars to pour into R&D for something as simple as an MP3 player would result in a superior product, but leave it to Microsoft to fail miserably.

Primary category: Apple : Rivals

Read - Comments (8)

Copyright Mac Publishing LLC. This RSS feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you're not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you're looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact webmaster@macworld.com so we can take legal action immediately.

Back to My Mac helps theft victim reclaim her Mac

2008-05-09T20:50:29Z

Whoever says a .Mac account is a waste of money has probably never had his or her Mac stolen. In this admittedly rare case of a .Mac account actually being useful, a White Plains, NY woman whose apartment was burglarized and de-Macified in the process, was able to use the Back to My Mac feature to identify the culprit.

The 23 year old victim was first notified by her friend that her stolen Mac appeared to be online (I guess the genius thief didn't think to log out of iChat?). This prompted her to sign on to her .Mac account through another computer and use the Back to My Mac program to determine that her computer was indeed online. She activated iPhoto and was able to get a snapshot of the thief, who her room mate recognized as "that sketchy dude from our party last week". The photos went to the police, and justice was served.

I personally hope the thief is put away for life. I know it sounds like a harsh sentence, but when you think about it, some people's lives are in their laptops, and so stealing a laptop is like stealing someone's life. Therefore, laptop theft is equatable to murder, and convicted laptop thieves should thus receive life sentences for their abominable crimes (man, I'm going to make an awesome lawyer).

Primary category: Apple : Huh?

Read - Comments (6)

Macworld reviews the Open Computer and we've had enough of it

2008-05-09T19:00:13Z

If the Psystar Open Computer is of any interest to you at all, you might want to know that Macworld has now tested one of these things and published the results, as promised. To lend the benchmarks a little bit of perspective, it has been compared to the Mac mini, the newest 20-inch iMac and Rob Griffiths's infamous Frankenmac.

Overall, the Psystar's performance was somewhere between the Mac mini and the low end 20-inch, 2.4GHz core 2 Duo 20 iMac. Speedmark 5 results show the Psystar to be 28 percent faster than the high-end Mac mini and 8 percent slower than the low end iMac.

And that's pretty much it. Macworld has an elaborate chart detailing all the numbers in comparison to the other three contenders and analysis about its performance in various departments, but we all know they're just doing it because its their job.

If we had our way, and the honkin' huge machine could fit inside one of those blenders, we'd have been describing a very different type of test right now and it would have been accompanied by an amusing YouTube video.

In any case, if you've had enough of the Psystar coverage to last you a while, we assure you that we share your pain, so we're hoping there won't be any more Psystar stories from here on out--unless something really important happens, of course, like someone puts it in a blender.

Primary category: Hardware

Read - Comments (4)

Apple patent reveals the possibility of a 3D remote control

2008-05-09T18:14:36Z

According to a patent published by the US Patent & Trademark Office yesterday, Apple might be looking into the possibility of creating a multi-dimensional remote control system.

The patent describes a device that, when paired with a receiver (like the Apple TV perhaps, or any Mac enabled with an infrared sensor), can help navigate in a three-dimensional environment using movement and relative position detection. The patent application describes this in great detail using a whole lot of technical jargon, but that's the gist of it.

If this is indeed something Apple is planning for the future, the most obvious use I can think of is pairing it with the Apple TV and making it a gaming device, not unlike the Nintendo Wii. Also, since we're already assuming that Apple has any intention of bringing their patented ideas to fruition, maybe they could build the virtual store around this thing? Let us know what you think.

[Via MacNN]

Primary category: Apple : Speculation

Read - Comments (0)

New iMacs get the benchmarking treatment by Macworld

2008-05-09T17:29:04Z

The upgraded 20-inch and 24-inch iMacs launched by Apple last Monday have now been released from the Macworld labs after being subjected to an extensive battery of tests, and their cheery faces seem to indicate that the results are good. As expected, the new iMacs, with their better processor and memory configurations, top the previous generation models in pretty much every test they were put through.

Of particular interest is the fact that there is a significant performance gap between the 2.4GHz and 2.66GHz 20-inch configurations, more than enough to justify the $300 price difference between the two units. If you're opting for the 20-incher, the 2.66GHz will definitely offer more value for your money.

If graphics performance is important to you, however, you might want to set your sights on the built-to-order 3.06GHz configuration. Not only does it beat all the other iMacs in gaming performance by handsome margins, the beautiful 24-inch boasts a much better viewing angle than its 6-bit 20-inch counterparts.

If you're in the market for a desktop Mac, these new kids on the block just might be what you're looking for. They offer much better specifications and performance then they used to just a couple of weeks ago, while retaining the same sexy looks and prices--what else could one ask for!

Primary category: Hardware : Intel Macs

Read - Comments (0)

Solved mysteries: MacBook USB ports solve your Cylon infestation

2008-05-09T16:44:02Z

Well, that answers that question. If you listened to my appearance on the MacJury podcast a couple of weeks ago—and if you didn’t, then I’m afraid we are no longer friends—you heard me describe fixing a problem with my USB mic by the simple and expedient solution of switching which port it was plugged into, something that I’d noticed in the past as well. Why, wondered the assembled panel, should that make such a difference? Was one of my ports broken?

Our own occasional columnist and Mac expert extraordinaire Andy Ihnatko provided the solution on the most recent MacBreak Weekly podcast, where—after listening to fellow panelist Alex Lindsay run into the same sort of Cylon-sound mic problems I’d suffered from—he pointed out that the MacBook’s rear USB port (the one closer to the screen) does not provide as much power, since it’s already connected to an internal USB hub that also feeds the keyboard, trackpad, iSight, Bluetooth, and IR receiver. Adding another high-drain device—such as a microphone—to the mix is probably not going to end well.

So if you’re running into any problems with USB devices not getting enough power, maybe you should try switching up the ports and see if that solves all your woes.

[via Gadget Lab]

Primary category: Troubleshooting

Read - Comments (1)

Apple dinged on environment again

2008-05-09T16:03:19Z

Despite Apple’s big push last year on environmental issues, it seems that the green community isn’t that impressed. While Greenpeace marginally raised Apple’s ranking on its latest scorecard, non-profit Climate Counts has a few choice words to say about Cupertino’s stance on the environment.

In their most recent scorecard, the organization ranks Apple at the bottom of the list for electronics companies, with an 11 out of a possible 100, deeming them “a choice to avoid for the climate-conscious consumer” (we say bravo for the catchy, alliterative verdict). Even second-to-last Nokia scored a 37, and IBM led the pack with a 77. As with Greenpeace, a lot of Climate Counts’s criticisms concern Apple’s lack of transparency on environmental issues, something the company has been improving upon slowly.

It was a year ago last Friday that Steve Jobs posted the A Greener Apple memo, in which he promised that Apple “will be providing updates of our efforts and accomplishments at least annually.” And yet, all is quiet from corporate HQ. I think it’s about time for the company to deliver on that promise, at least.

Primary category: Business

Read - Comments (0)

Where there's smoke, there's class action payments

2008-05-09T15:19:09Z

Ah, the yo-yo power adapter. I always though it was a bit of a misnomer, since if you ever tried to actually use it as a yo-yo, you quickly discovered that it was worthless. Frankly, it wasn’t much better as a power adapter, either. Though I appreciated the built-in cable management, I was far more distressed by the fact that it often seemed to spark and flash when I plugged it in. I ended up burning through a couple of these suckers while I owned a Pismo and later a G3 iBook.

And apparently, I was not alone. A story in this morning’s Los Angeles Times says that Apple has agreed to pay refunds of $25 to $79 to as many as 2.3 million Mac users who ended up buying replacement power adapters for certain PowerBooks and iBooks because of faulty power adapters. A class action suit was launched in 2006, contending that Apple had misrepresented problems with its power adapters after recalling just 570,000 of them in 2001.

I really like the current era power adapters over the yo-yo, but they have their share of problems too; I had to buy a replacement a month or two ago after MagSafe cord frayed where it connected to the brick. Still, at least they haven’t caught on fire yet.

Anyway, there’s a final approval hearing scheduled for September 8th, so I imagine we’ll have details on where you can queue up for your cash after that.

Primary category: Legal

Read - Comments (1)

Microsoft offers Expression suite via Parallels

2008-05-09T13:26:11Z

Head-scratch inducing actions are Microsoft’s reason for being lately. Most recently, they announced offering their Expression Professional Subscription in June would be available for $999. At one point, the original path based drawing tool Expression was a Mac native product. Now, only Expression Media (formerly known as iView Media Pro is a Mac product. The Microsoft solution? Run everything in virtualization.

Clearly, Microsoft has made a mistake here. The mistake is forgetting to rip Mac compatibility out of ~~iView Media Pro~~ Expression Media. How they could be that forgetful is beyond me. Recently, company after company has figured out ways to maintain the same application on multiple platforms, whether it’s by using an assisting technology like Qt or coming up with their own solution. These aren’t gigantic corporations.

Microsoft on the other hand can’t even maintain feature parity on their ~~cashcow~~ flagship products like Office (VBA support?). Microsoft has just taken that final step and included Parallels, effectively throwing their hands up in defeat. Considering the disaster that is Vista, maybe it’s time for a major management overhaul in Redmond because clearly something is broken (I’ll give you a hint, they’re including Windows XP in addition to Vista in the bundle; says something, doesn’t it?).

Primary category: Apple : Rivals

Read - Comments (1)

It's Magiq! Plasq's new comic book creator

2008-05-08T18:37:53Z

Plasq makes some great stuff — like the famous Comic Life comic-creator that was pre-installed on consumer Macs, and my favorite, Skitch, a unique and amazingly-handy screen shot app. And they're pushing the limits of imagination again with Comic Life Magiq, a new, more in-depth and flexible approach to comic-booking, wrapped in a beautiful and — dare I say — fun to use interface.

It isn't really an "upgrade" to their original Comic Life, but a more Pro-like version of the concept with a slew of comprehensive and creative imaging features: professionally-designed templates and comic graphics, more-advanced comic object manipulation, Vector brushes, bezier paths, masking tools, an integrated image editor, and a bunch more.

But the interface is arguably Magiq's best quality — it's cartoony itself, harnessing Magiq's myriad of features in a simple, intuitive, and pretty-looking design. The whole construction of the app makes you want to use it...like making a comic book would be fun or something.

Comic Life Magiq is available for the limited-time price of $40, with a cross-upgrade for $20 for owners of the current Comic Life. Check the site for more details and a 30-day demo. (Note about the demo: When I downloaded it, Safari added a ".bz2" extension which made the file unusable. Simply remove that extension — leaving the .dmg — and open the file. An image should mount that contains the app.)

Primary category: Software

Read - Comments (0)

Qtrax totally has a music deal now, like for real

2008-05-08T16:36:43Z

I don’t think we’ve mentioned Qtrax before—mainly because there wasn’t really anything to say, other than to laugh uproariously when it turned out that the company, which claimed in January that it had struck deals with all the major labels for free, legal P2P downloads—had, er, kind of neglected to tell any of the labels. However, now that they’ve actually managed to beguile one of the record companies—the increasingly promiscuous Universal—into some sort of “agreement,” I suppose we have to give them their due.

Seems to me that this relationship is destined for a crash and burn, though. Seriously, Qtrax sounds like they are way too into Universal:

“All of UMG’s music available digitally will be available for free, legal downloads on Qtrax,” Qtrax spokeswoman Shamin Abas told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Universal is already dodging Qtrax’s repeated insistences on meeting their friends and family, concocting such award-winning excuses as “Unfortunately, they’ve all signed up to be Mars colonists” and “I’m afraid they all died fighting in the Crimean War.”

UMG spokesman Peter Lofrumento confirmed Tuesday that an agreement has been reached but declined to elaborate or to say whether a contract has been signed.

Added Universal, “I mean, it’s not like we’re going steady or anything. We’re still seeing other distribution sites.”

The two said that Universal’s artists and songwriters would be compensated for their music, though under pointed questioning Qtrax admitted that it would be paying them in magical fairy money.

Primary category: Music

Read - Comments (0)

More on Apple gobbling up PA Semi

2008-05-08T15:47:27Z

Steve Jobs does not mess around. When the man wants a bag of chips, he buys a chip company. Disappointed to find that PA Semi does not in fact make Fritos, Jobs and co. decided to make lemoade by asking them to design some microchips for an Apple-branded toaster or something.

But why buy the company in the first place? The EETimes sheds some light on what went into the decision. Apple, which was allegedly an investor (potentially anonymous) in PA Semi before the acquisition, wanted the company to design a chip for them, but PA Semi had already exhausted their venture capital funds. At which point, Steve Jobs apparently sighed, beckoned over his manservant, and had them pay off the rest of the investors in solid gold ingots he has trucked around with him (why do you think he needs a private jet?).

Of course, that still leaves the burning question of what precisely the requested chip is for. Given Apple’s close ties to Intel for the Mac and the fact that PA Semi previously worked on PowerPC chips, it seems unlikely that it will be for anything in that line; much more likely are products in the consumer electronics division. Or, just maybe, something that we haven’t seen yet.

Primary category: Business

Read - Comments (4)

Windows XP SP3 is unleashed (for real this time)

2008-05-08T14:06:48Z

You may not have heard (and I’m sure more than a couple of you don’t care) that Windows XP SP3 was set to be released last week. It was postponed as Microsoft scrambled to address the fact that it’s not compatible with one of their own products. Irony? A little bit. It’s more anticompetitive than anything. If a third-party product is broken by the service pack, you can bet anything Microsoft won’t be taking any action. The fact is that they delayed because it was their product.

At any rate, some of us use a virtualization product (like Parallels or Fusion) or may be using Boot Camp. For the latter group, I have a warning. Well, it’s more of a reminder. Boot Camp 2.1 was released a scant couple of weeks ago. Allow me to point out what Apple has to say (and no, it’s not “stability and performance improvements”).

Important: Installation of Boot Camp 2.1 is required before installing Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3)

That is important. Take it to heart and get that update installed before you attempt a service pack.

Primary category: Windows

Read - Comments (0)

OpenOffice 3.0 beta finally embraces Aqua

2008-05-08T12:20:50Z

OpenOffice 3.0 has reached public beta status. They’ve actually taken the Mac community’s criticism to heart and this is the first version to sport an all new Aqua interface.

With Version 3.0, OpenOffice.org is now able to run on Mac OS X without the need for X11. Thus, OpenOffice.org behaves like any other Aqua application. The cool thing is, while the market leading office suite vendor dropped VBA support and the Solver feature, OpenOffice.org recently introduced limited VBA support and includes a powerful Solver component. In addition, OpenOffice.org integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications. Finally, people like OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac OS X because of its very good stability and performance. Reportedly, some Mac users have switched to OpenOffice.org just because of its extremely good stability.

Ouch, ouch. Microsoft must be searching for its cup right now. I still remain skeptical that dropping VBA support in Microsoft Office for Mac was the right move. At any rate, this is a way to get even rudimentary support.

I’d also like to suggest that the OpenOffice folks lay off the use of the word “good”. While “good” is superlatively good, it’s not jaw-droppingly good. A thesaurus is our friend. OpenOffice has one, right?

Anyway, the download is now available and I expect some expert reader commentary on the new interface. I’ll be sticking with iWork. Turns out it has everything I needed.

Primary category: Software

Read - Comments (9)

The Search for a Free Spanning Sync: Part...eh, who's keeping count?

2008-05-07T22:34:59Z

For more than a year now, I've been on the hunt for a free alternative to Spanning Sync, the paid application for bi-directional syncing between Google Calendar and iCal. Recently, a new alternative to Spanning Sync has entered the fray, one that is actually a branch-off of a previous app I wrote about – Calgoo.

This new app is called Calgoo Connect. As its name suggests, Calgoo Connect is made by the same people that make Calgoo, a desktop calendar app that can sync with Google Calendar and 30 Boxes. The difference between Calgoo Connect and its older sibling is that Calgoo Connect is not a standalone calendar app but instead a service for bi-directional syncing between iCal and Micorosft Outlook and Google Calendar, 30 Boxes, and Calgoo Hub, Calgoo's own online calendar sharing service.

While this may seem like the perfect app for iCal-gCal syncing, especially if you have a Windows machine with an Outlook calender, there is one major downside – price. Calgoo Connect will run you $30/year, $5 more than what Spanning Sync costs. Of course, those extra five bucks get you more calendar services for syncing, but for someone who wants simple, two-way syncing between iCal and Google Calendar, Calgoo Connect just won't cut it. But, if Calgoo could release a free, "lite" version of their Connect app, it may be just the program I'm looking for.

Primary category: Software

Read - Comments (0)