Apple

We had really hoped to confirm recent blog reports that a massive Apple Computer store going up in midtown Manhattan, which some have referred to as "Apple mecca," will be the company's first retail outlet open 24 hours a day.

But, alas, an Apple spokesman said the company isn't ready to confirm, deny or make any official announcements about the store, so we can only offer our observations, and point to what others have written.

The store--which will reportedly be 25,000 square feet--is located in the underground retail plaza of the General Motors Building on … Read more

Heads up all Red Hot Chili Pepper fans--or even iPod collectors:

If you pre-order the band's new double album, "Stadium Arcadium," from Apple's iTunes Music Store, you'll be entered to win a Chili Peppers iPod. Pre-ordering also gets you an immediate download of the track "Dani California," a bonus video on the making of the "Dani California" video, audio commentary from the band, a full-color digital booklet and the opportunity to buy tickets for the band's North American tour four days before they officially go on sale.

All we know … Read more

Reports that Apple is working on a wide-screen consumer notebook have been around for months, but Think Secret says the long-awaited portable will finally arrive by next month.

The Apple rumor site says that the laptop, which will carry the MacBook name, will sport a 13.3-inch wide-format display. The site says that a 17-inch MacBook Pro could also be on its way.

Another site, AppleInsider, suggests that the MacBook may also see a return to colorful options for Apple, which has been decidedly monochromatic with recent computers clad in either metal or white.

Apple has promised to transition its … Read more

Over on the Apple.com discussion boards, a number of people are reporting that Boot Camp--Apple's new beta software that allows Intel-based Mac owners to install Windows XP--is causing some serious problems.

To be precise, the common crisis is that after partitioning their hard drives and installing Windows XP--which seems to work fine--these people find they can no longer boot back into OS X.

And it's not just one or two people. A quick read through these forums revealed around 10 people with the problem--and a growing list of scary-sounding error messages.

A few of them are … Read more

A 35-year-old identity theft suspect may have taken Apple Computer's mandate, "Think Different," a little too far.

Wilson Lee, of San Francisco, has been charged with 54 criminal--mostly felony--counts including identity theft, grand theft, credit card fraud, forgery, auto theft, student loan application theft and possession of stolen property, San Francisco police said.

But in a new twist, at least for the department, police found some of the alleged stolen data stored on an iPod in Lee's possession.

"This is the first time I know of that we actually got data off (an MP3 player),&… Read more

Now enriched with hefty cash reserves thanks in large part to booming iPod sales, Apple Computer isn't about to let California tax collectors take too big of a bite.

The Cupertino, Calif.-headquartered firm has taken an unknown portion of its portfolio and set up shop in the veritable tax haven of Nevada, according to a recent BusinessWeek Online report.

The arid state has earned popularity among businesses because it has neither a corporate income tax nor a capital-gains one and shares no information with federal tax collectors, the report said.

Apple is calling its new endeavor Braeburn Capital--named, … Read more

iSync, Apple Computer's .Mac member service for synchronizing contacts, passwords and other information among multiple devices, has been down since Tuesday.

".Mac sync services are currently unavailable. Changes made to synced information will be reflected when the problem is resolved. All other .Mac services are unaffected. Last Updated: 04/05/06," says a service message currently on Apple's .Mac support home page.

The .Mac System Status indicator also shows an orange triangle instead of green circle beside "Network Status," signaling a problem.

According to postings on .Mac's Community Forum, the outage, which Apple … Read more

The reader response to Apple's new Boot Camp utility, which lets you install Windows XP on a MacBook Pro or an iMac Core Duo, has been mixed so far.

Me, though? Man, I'm psyched. This makes my job a lot easier. As a laptop reviewer at CNET.com, I've always been frustrated by the apples to oranges (insert Bronx cheer) comparisons I've been forced to make when pitting PowerBooks and iBooks against the PC competition. Boot Camp finally provides a baseline for a true head-to-head contest of Apple hardware vs. PC hardware, without operating systems or … Read more

One of the biggest hang-ups with the Intel Macs is that there's still software, notably Adobe Photoshop, whose Apple-specific code has not yet been converted to run on Intel-based hardware. Apple's answer was emulation, but the performance in intense content creation apps like Photoshop and Sorensen Squeeze for video editing is ugly. But here in the post-Boot Camp world, Intel-based Apple owners can now have it both ways.

With Windows XP Pro running on a 2.0GHz iMac Core Duo, we ran our Photoshop test in less than half the time it took than with the same … Read more