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Review: Leander Kahney's 'Inside Steve's Brain'

For years, the Steve Jobs biography has been a staple of the technology business publishing press.

The genre has been highlighted by titles such as Alan Deutschman's 2000 book, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs and 2005's iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business by Jeffrey Young and William Simon. The latter was attacked by Jobs himself for being an unauthorized biography, and by Deutschman for being eerily similar to his own book.

There was also, of course, Forbes writer Daniel Lyons' (aka "Fake Steve Jobs") 2007 parody, oPtion$: The secret … Read more

Apple cloning: Worth it?

It doesn't take much to put Apple in the news, and this afternoon's excuse is that a Miami-based company called PsyStar is selling a Mac clone.

Its Web site was down earlier--ostensibly because of the overwhelming reaction to its product. As Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports:

Before its site went dark Monday, PsyStar was pitching an Intel-based system it said could be configured to run Leopard, Apple's Mac OS X 10.5. The machine, which was priced at $399 minus Leopard, $554 with it already installed, is powered by a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor … Read more

Apple working on MacBook video fix

Apple has acknowledged video problems with the latest shipment of MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Early customers of the Penryn refresh of the Apple notebooks had complained of flickering images during a QuickTime video playback on MacBooks and MacBook Pros shipping with the latest version of Mac OS X Leopard, according to our colleagues over at MacFixIt. Several discussion threads have sprung up over on Apple's user forums, and some customers report that Apple has now acknowledged the problem and is working on a fix.

MacFixIt reports that fix should come with Mac OS X 10.5.3, currently in … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 702: Design to annoy

Yes, Microsoft has come clean and admitted that it designs User Account Control, those little pop-ups that happen when you install software for instance, which were in fact designed to annoy you. They hoped it would make software better. We don't think it worked. Also, Rafe gets Blockblustery, and we take on Virgin Media's load of bollocks. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 702

Psystar’s OpenMac Apple clone is close to a cease and desist order http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/14/ psystars-openmac-clone-is-close-to-a-cease-and-desist-order/ http://www.macrumors.com/2008/04/14/ openmac-promises-399-headless-mac-but-not-from-apple/

Vista’s UAC security … Read more

The '500,000-song' iPod isn't surprising

IBM researchers have reportedly demonstrated technology that will increase hard drive capacity 100-fold, as well as offer major improvements in energy consumption (leading to much longer battery life) and better reliability. Production is estimated in seven to ten years.

The reports summarizing the researchers' findings, which were published in Science (subscription required), use the shorthand "500,000 songs on a portable MP3 player" to describe the advance.

Today's iPod lineup contains no product advertised to hold 5,000 songs, so I'm not sure where the 500,000 figure came from. In fact, the current highest-capacity iPod is 160GB, … Read more

Mac OS X seller (not Apple) disappears after reports

An entrepreneurial Mac vendor has gone offline just hours after it was discovered selling Mac OS X Leopard desktops from a company not named Apple.

MacRumors.com, along with many others, noted one of those too-good-to-be-true deals from a company called Psystar on Sunday night and Monday morning. Psystar, until just now, had been offering $554 "Open Mac" desktops on its Web site with Intel processors, 2GB of memory, a DVD drive, and a copy of Mac OS X Leopard.

The thing is, Apple's software license for Leopard, and any version of Mac OS X, requires that … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 701: Doughnut for your hate

Flickr-haters get free doughnuts. If that's what you get for hating, sign us up! Also, Gartner hates on Windows, and no one gets any doughnuts for that. Europe rejects plans to criminalize file-sharing, offering doughnuts in the form of broad exemptions for fair use, and Network Solutions gets a big, fat doughnut hole for putting ads on your subdomains. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 701

Mike Please keep doing the show.

Windows is ‘collapsing,’ Gartner analysts warn http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9916717-56.html http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1870375122;fp;;fpid;;pf;1 http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8428… Read more

The problem with Windows.

Poor Microsoft.

No, really.

OK, stop that. Stop that snickering.

OK, well, just a little snickering. Go ahead.

OK, done now?

OK.

But, look, they really have a tough job. Apparently -- and who could have predicted this? -- there's a cost to being everything to everyone. The Macalope doesn't envy them. They have a gazillion different users with a gazillion different requirements and hundreds (thousands?) of hardware manufacturers they have to get their software to satisfy those requirements on.

Suddenly the Apple method of making the whole enchilada doesn't seem so bad now does it?

So, … Read more

Bringing the family together with iCal

After years of trying to figure out how to keep track of an ever-growing array of events and to-dos, my wife and I finally settled on iCal, Apple's calendaring program. iCal syncs seamlessly with my Zimbra (work) calendar, and easily syncs with my wife's iPhone, where she inputs most of her appointment data.

The result? Pure bliss. No more, "But you didn't tell me you'd be out of town on that day!" Gone are the days of (blame-free) accusations like, "Why did you schedule soccer practice right in the middle of Greta's … Read more