Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
ie8 fix

mac

Laptop class warfare: Apple vs. Asus

A little more than a year after the launch of the MacBook Air, a new luxury laptop has arrived from Dell. This calls for another look at the notebook versus Netbook argument, the computer equivalent of bourgeoisie versus proletariat. In this case, Air versus Aspire; Adamo versus Eee.

Lightweight luxury laptops have been around for a while (think Sony Vaio and Toshiba Portege ultraportables), but the age of head-turning, ultrathin designs dawned with the 13-inch light-and-wide MacBook Air, the HP Voodoo Envy 133, and the ThinkPad X300.

Now the Dell Adamo joins the stable of conspicuously consumed luxury laptops. The Adamo soars along with Apple's Air in the rarefied pricing altitudes of $1,799 to $2,699.

At the other extreme are Asus and Acer, down-to-earth working-class designs which offer portability for a lot less. Though both companies offer expensive laptops too, they have gained prominence with their inexpensive Netbooks: the Eee PC and Aspire One, respectively. These typically fall into the sub-$500 range.

Dell's entry into the luxury laptop market was replete with all the trappings of a high-end product rollout, including a lavish, overdone Adamo Web site (as in, I couldn't click on "skip intro" fast enough) of beautiful people clutching computers. (And viewing the site, this question comes to mind: Is the Adamo meant more as a Dell showcase item--like a piece of finery set in a vitrine, to be admired but not purchased?)

Juxtapose this with what's happening in the Netbook space: inconspicuous but slow-but-steady creep into a higher-performance bracket. This trend is being driven by better Intel graphics (the GN40 is now capable of 720p HD video), with some Netbook designers entertaining the idea of adding even higher-performance Nvidia graphics. Reports also claim the Atom processor will be ratcheted up to 2.0GHz.

Will one design philosophy eventually prevail? Gravitating to a sweet-spot somewhere in the middle?

Let's do a little comparison shopping. … Read more

Report: Apple leaks 17-inch iMac for $899?

It's kind of funny when an Italian-language site breaks a wee bit of English-language-based Apple news, but that's what happened when SetteB.IT spotted a small mention of an $899 17-inch iMac for the education market on Apple's own Web site.

Currently, Apple is offering iMacs only in 20- and 24-inch screen sizes. The 20-inch model starts at $1,199, and the 24-incher starts at $1,499.

No word on when the "new" 17-incher will arrive (or if it's really new), but we'll await official confirmation from Apple.

Anybody interested? In this economy, … Read more

New Mac Pro with Radeon HD 4870 card not quite a 3D gaming powerhouse

We promised some more benchmark scores for Apple's new eight-core Mac Pro this morning, and once the Fed Ex delivery guy showed up, we got to work. Apple sent us an ATI Radeon HD 4870 3D card to see how the major graphics card upgrade for the Mac Pro would improve its 3D gaming performance.

As in our review of the Mac Pro, we tested with three different time demos in the Mac version of Call of Duty 4. We set the resolution to a modest 1,680 x 1,050 with 4x anti-aliasing. The results, as you can … Read more

mac.column.ted: Secrets of the Dual-Band AirPort Extreme

contributed by Ted Landau

Apple's latest version of its AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBS) supports simultaneous dual-band. As Apple explains, this means that the new Extreme has separate "2.4GHz and 5GHz bands...to ensure top performance for all your devices." As this was a feature I could definitely use, I decided to buy a new AEBS. My intention was to update my existing older and overly-complicated setup. For those of you considering buying a new Extreme, I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that, if you have a relatively simple … Read more

Report: Ballmer disses on Apple

What's the difference between a Mac and a PC?

According to comments reportedly made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: $500 and a logo.

Ballmer, according to a report in TechFlash, issued his fighting words during his keynote speech at Media Summit 2009 in New York.

When asked about Apple's market share growth in computers, Ballmer reportedly responded with a barb to his competitor, according to TechFlash:

Apple gained about one point, but now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction.

The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment … Read more

Apple flexes design muscle in speedy new Mac Pro

We posted our review of Apple's new Mac Pro on Thursday night. You can read all about it here.

So it's clear, we tested the default, $3,299 eight-core spec with a pair of 2.26GHz Intel Xeon quad-core CPUs, 6GB of RAM, and a 512MB GeForce GT 120 3D card. With the help of our digital-imaging and video production teams, we also put together a few extra tests.

We took Photoshop 4 and timed a batch RAW file treatment, and we also have two Final Cut Studio 2 tests that take an HD video file and prepare … Read more

Mac developer to ditch Mac for iPhone

Pangea Software's Brian Greenstone was interviewed by The Guardian this week at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. During the interview, Brian revealed that his company would no longer develop software products for Macs and would instead focus entirely on the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms.

Like many other iPhone application developers, Pangea Software is finding plenty of money to be made in the iTunes App Store. The company has earned $1.5 million on iPhone and iPod Touch application sales in the iTunes App Store, a figure that Greenstone points out makes Mac development earnings … Read more

When 5 percent equals 20 percent

A lot of companies have torn down the PC Berlin Wall and now allow employees to use Macintosh computers as well as PCs. Apparently, this creates some interesting dynamics for PC support people.

From what I've heard, most organizations settle in at approximately 95 percent PCs, and 5 percent Macs. Seems like a small and manageable percentage, but here's the rub. According to some services vendors and PC administrators I've talked to, a large portion of the Mac users are executives--CEOs, COOs, chief legal counsel, etc. These folks get top priority and can be very demanding, so … Read more

Have Mac, need wireless access point

This week in London I remembered one of the remarkable things that Mac OS X and the Apple hardware provide: wireless access.

By this I'm not referring to the ability to access the Internet through the Mac's WiFi hardware, but rather, the ability to provide wireless access to others using one's Mac. I used it this week to get WiFi access on my iPhone while in my hotel room, so that I'd only have to pay for Internet access once (through my laptop), and avoid Apple's/AT&T's substantial roaming data charges.

For … Read more