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News & Opinion
Tech Trends
Products
News & Opinion
Apple Sues Psystar for Trademark Violation,
Copyright Infringement
ZD Net blogger Larry Dignan
says:
"Apple has filed a lawsuit against Psystar, a Mac clone maker based
in Florida....
"Apple alleges licensing and trademark violations and copyright
infringement. Apple apparently was waiting to see if Psystar (all
resources) was legit and finding customers before launching its
lawsuit."
Link: The
End of Mac Clones: Apple Sues Psystar
Clone Maker Gets Legal Greeting from Apple
The Register's
Austin Modine reports:
"As was inevitable, hackintosh vendor Psystar has found itself on
Apple's legal to-do list.
"Apple has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the open
hardware manufacturer, which began raising eyebrows by offering a $400
computer capable of running copies of Mac OS X."
Link: Hackintosh
Maker Gets Legal Greeting from Apple
Apple Now Third-Largest Selling Personal Computer
Brand in the US
Gartner says
worldwide PC Market grew 16% in the second quarter of 2008 with laptops
in the forefront
Worldwide PC shipments reached 71.9 million units in the second
quarter of 2008, a 16% increase from the second quarter of 2007,
according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. Of particular
interest to Low End Mac readers will be the metric that shows Apple is
now the third-largest selling PC brands in the US, surpassing all
competitors except for Dell and HP, and showing year-over-year growth
of 38.1% - and that's with fourth-place Acer having gobbled up Gateway
and Packard Bell.
"Mobile PCs continued to lead unit growth across all regions as the
average selling price (ASP) of mobile PCs declined sharply relative to
desk-based PC ASPs," said Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for
Gartner's Client Computing Markets group. "Economic uncertainties have
hit PC revenues, resulting in steep ASP declines, especially in markets
such as the United States and the Europe, Middle East, and Africa
(EMEA) region. The industry could ultimately see a significant wave of
consolidation if stronger vendors continue to press their pricing
advantage."
HP continued to maintain the No. 1 position with its worldwide PC
shipment market share totaling 18.1% in the second quarter of 2008.
HP's growth rate exceeded the industry average in the worldwide market,
and its growth rate was little above the industry average in the US
Dell had another strong quarter with worldwide PC shipments
increasing 21.9% in the second quarter of 2008 and its market share
reaching 15.6%. The company's growth was fueled by its expansion into
retail and other indirect channels. Preliminary results show Dell
achieved over 40% year-over-year growth in mobile shipments for two
consecutive quarters.
PC shipments in the United States reached 16.5 million units in the
second quarter of 2008, a 4.2% increase from the same period last year.
US PC shipments actually accelerated during the quarter, despite
continuing US economic woes. However, this acceleration appears to have
been achieved at the expense of revenues as vendors appear to have cut
prices in response to those woes.
"Home mobile PCs continue to have momentum in the US market.
However, ASP declines were greater here than in other segments. The
retail space was a harsh pricing environment during the quarter," Ms.
Kitagawa said. "US professional units look to have been affected by
tightening IT budgets as US business responded to growing economic
uncertainty. Desk-based PCs gained traction among some professional
users. Because desk-based PC deployment costs are still lower than that
of mobile PCs, desk-based PCs provide a less expensive option for these
buyers with tighter budgets."
Several mini-notebook PCs were introduced in the US market during
the second quarter. However, this platform is still emerging and did
not significantly contribute to overall shipment growth. Preliminary
data shows the mini-notebook segment accounted for less than 3% of US
mobile PC shipments.
In the US PC market, Dell continued to be the market leader with PC
shipments accounting for 31.9% of the US market in the second quarter
of 2008 (see Table above). HP's growth rate was slightly ahead of the
US average, and it appears HP's issues around inventory were resolved
in the quarter. Apple's PC shipments grew 38.1% in the quarter. The
home PC segment continued to be the strongest driver for Apple, as well
as sales into the education segment.
Link: Gartner
Keyboard vs. Mouse
David Alison says:
"...one of the myths that I clung to before considering a Mac was
that it was a highly mouse centered machine. Indeed, Macs take better
advantage of the mouse than most other operating systems do, especially
in the drag and drop department. See an image in a web page that you
want to grab? . . . Just drag it out of the browser and on to
your desktop.
"Clearly the mouse works great on Mac for many tasks, but so does
the keyboard. The usual navigational shortcuts are there for text
handling and there are system standard shortcuts for things like
preferences, window management, file saving, etc. But if you are a
touch typist tools like Spotlight, Quicksilver or LaunchBar add an
entirely new dimension to using the keyboard.
"In the time it takes to move your hand over to the mouse, position
the mouse pointer on the screen and perform an action you can often do
the same task more quickly by using the correct keyboard
commands...."
Link: Keyboard
vs. Mouse
Livescribe Audio Pen Computer on Its Way to
Mac
BetaNews's
Jacqueline Emigh reports:
"Livescribe's microprocessor-embedded, audio-enabled digital Pulse
Smartpen - an upcoming gadget that made its first bow at Demo earlier
this year - is now expanding its reach, with an Apple SDK already in
the works....
"The initial Windows-based edition of the Smartpen has been targeted
for release this fall. But during this week's Digital Life press
preview here, a Livescribe spokesperson said the company actually now
foresees a stronger market on the Apple side, due to anticipated uses
of the sound-capable digital pen-and-paper set among college students
and creative pros, a couple of long-time Mac strongholds." d
Link:
Livescribe's Audio Pen Computer on Its Way from Windows to Mac
Less PowerPC, More iPhone
Hardmac's
Lionel says:
"We regularly look at our statistics and analyze the OS and hardware
being used by our visitors to evaluate trends and better know our
readers. IT clearly shows a clear decrease of Power PC-based computers
among our readers. It represents today only 27.74 % while Intel-based
Mac captures 72.26 %. Surprisingly, 1.98 % of our visitors use an
iPhone, a higher score than for Linux-based hardware readers."
Link: Less Mac Power PC, More
iPhone
1394 Trade Association Announces IEEE Approval of
IEEE 1394-2008 Specification
PR: The 1394 Trade Association has announced that the
IEEE Standards Board has approved the 1394-2008 specification, which
combines all IEEE-1394 [FireWire] specifications developed since the
world's leading audio-video multimedia standard was founded in
1994.
The 1394-2008 High Performance Serial Bus Standard updates and
revises all prior 1394 standards dating back to the original 1394-1995
version, and including 1394a, 1394b, 1394c, enhanced UTP, and the 1394
beta plus PHY-Link interface. It also incorporates the complete
specifications for S1600 (1.6 Gigabit/second bandwidth) and for S3200,
which provides 3.2 Gigabit/second speeds.
Known commercially as FireWire™ and i.Link™, 1394 has
been designed into a wide range of consumer, computer, industrial and
other products since its inception, and is emerging as a powerful new
standard for use in automotive entertainment systems.
"The consolidated 1394-2008 specification effectively allows one
single document to serve all," said Les Baxter, a long-time 1394 Trade
Association leader and director of Baxter Enterprises, who supervised
the process. "It provides one consistent document that provides
everything a designer or developer needs in order to work with 1394 in
any application. We assembled an experienced team of experts from
consumer electronics, computer, and semiconductor companies who have
worked diligently to complete this task on time."
The team dealt with errata remaining from prior specifications, and
harmonized all message types, including fields that had been used in
related specifications such as the 1394.1 bridging specification, and
IDB-1394, which was developed as the original automotive entertainment
standard. Not incorporated is work currently underway within the 1394
Trade Association working groups, including 1394 over coax and the new
1394-Automotive specification due later this summer.
Among the members of the revision team who worked with Baxter were
Peter Johansson of Congruent Technologies; Dave Thompson of LSI; David
Instone from Oxford Semiconductor; Richard Mourn, Quantum Parametrics;
Chris Thomas from Symwave; and Will Harris and Win Maung from Texas
Instruments.
IEEE and 1394 Trade Association copy editors will review the
document over the summer and finalize it by mid-October or sooner.
The 1394 Trade Association is a worldwide organization dedicated to
the advancement of the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) standard. The 1394 TA
recently celebrated its 13th year of promoting 1394 and its one
billionth 1394 port shipped. FireWire is used today in mass-market
computer, entertainment, and professional products, and in a wide range
of specialty applications such as music, defense, aerospace,
industrial, and robotics products.
FireWire is a trademark of Apple, licensed to the 1394 Trade
Association. i.Link is a trademark of Sony Corporation, licensed to the
1394 Trade Association
Link: 1394 Trade
Association
Tech Trends
gOS Linux: OS X-like Operating System
TechRepublic's Jack Wallen reports:
"On January 7, 2008, gOS released the beta version of Space - their
latest iteration of gOS. It's different for sure. It's like OS X
with an added bit of fun. gOS Space is truly a social network fan's
dream come true. But what exactly makes this operating system special?
Let's take a look at some of the bits that cause Space to stand
out."
"While gOS is amazingly stable (for such an effects-centric
operating system), it will not be able to update to the latest version
of Ubuntu. Space is based on 7.10 and has the distribution upgrade
disabled. Instead, the next revision of Space will be based on 8.04.
Actually I am hoping it takes long enough and they have to base it on
8.10 instead (only because I have found 8.04 to be too buggy.)"
Link: gOS: OS X-like
Operating System without the Apple
How Much Linux Can You Get for $20?
InformationWeek's Serdar Yegulalp reports:
"Most of us reading this are probably accustomed to the idea of
getting Linux for the cost of an opinion about the weather - in other
words, nothing. But now Ubuntu, arguably the most visible of Linux
distributions, is hitting store shelves at Best Buy for the practically
impulse-buy cost of $20.
"Why pay?"
Link:
How Much Linux Can You Get for $20?
Products
Seagate Introduces World's First 1.5 TB Desktop
Hard Drives
PR:
Seagate has unveiled the industry's first 1.5 TB desktop hard drives to
meet explosive worldwide demand for digital-content storage in home and
business environments.
The debut of the Barracuda® 7200.11 1.5 TB hard drive, the
eleventh generation of Seagate's flagship drive for desktop PCs, marks
the single largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than
half-century history of hard drives - a half-terabyte increase from the
previous highest capacity of 1 TB, thanks to the capacity-boosting
power of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.
The Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive combines proven PMR technology,
components and expert manufacturing to provide 1.5 TB of reliable
storage for mainstream desktop computers, workstations, desktop RAID,
gaming and high-end PCs, and USB/FireWire/eSATA external storage.
Highlighting the global growth of digital content, Seagate expects
to ship its two billionth hard drive within the next five years.
Earlier this year Seagate shipped its one billionth hard drive since
the company's inception nearly 30 years ago.
"Organizations and consumers of all kinds worldwide continue to
create, share and consume digital content at levels never before seen,
giving rise to new markets, new applications and demand for desktop and
notebook computers with unprecedented storage capacity, performance and
reliability," said Michael Wingert, Seagate executive vice president
and general manager, Personal Compute Business. "Seagate is committed
to powering the next generation of computing today with the planet's
fastest, highest-capacity and most reliable storage solutions."
The Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive combines the capacity and speed
required for today's most demanding desktop PC applications. The drive
packs 1.5 TB on just four platters and its fast Serial ATA 3 Gb/second
interface delivers an industry-leading sustained data rate of up to 120
MB/second for fast boot, application startup and file access. The 3.5"
drive is also offered in capacities of 1 TB, 750 GB, 640 GB, 500
GB, 320 GB and 160 GB with cache options of 32 MB and 16 MB.
All Barracuda drives are backed by Seagate's leading five-year
warranty.
Shipments of the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB are set to begin August
2008.
Link: Seagate
OWC Expands Neptune FireWire Drive Line with 750
MB, 1 TB of Storage
Other World Computing (OWC) has announced the
low-cost OWC Neptune line of external FireWire hard drive solutions
with a high speed of 7200 rpm and capacities up to 1 TB, double
the prior highest capacity 500 GB model. OWC Neptune FireWire solutions
are perfect for audio/video, gaming, music, photography, and backup
(fully Apple Time-Machine Plug n' Play ready).
Neptune is the "Value Done Right" external storage drive solution,
providing high-performance on a budget with the same industry leading
Oxford chipset and heavy-duty power supplies available in OWC's
higher-end Mercury Elite storage line. OWC uses only the best
components and qualified hard drive mechanisms. Compact at 1.5" x 9" x
5.5", the drives are portable, weigh only 2.7 pounds, and boast an
extremely shock resistant design for maximum data safety.
Neptune key features include:
- Cool Blue Activity Indicator LED!
- Super quiet fanless operation
- Fully Suitable for Audio/Video Applications '
- US / International 90 ~ 240v
- AutoSwitching
All cables included- ProSoft Engineering Data Backup for Mac OS X v10.2.8 or later
- NovaStor NovaBACKUP for Windows 2000 or later
- Custom Oxford 1394A Performance FireWire Bridge
- (2) 6 Pin FW400 ports
- 7200 rpm drive mechanism
- Up to a 32 MB Data Buffer
- Shock Resistant Design
- Data Rates of over 40 Megs per Second
- Compact Size: 1.5" x 9" x 5.5", stands vertically or lays flat
- Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools Utilities (For Mac OS 8.6 - X
only)
- One Year OWC Solution Warranty
OWC Neptune External Hard Drive Pricing:
- 80 GB 7200 rpm with 8 MB data buffer: $84.99
- 160 GB 7200 rpm with 8 MB data buffer: $92.99
- 250 GB 7200 rpm with 8 MB data buffer: $99.95
- 320 GB 7200 rpm with 16 MB data buffer: $109.99
- 500 GB 7200 rpm with 16 MB data buffer: $124.99
- 750 GB 7200 rpm with 32 MB data buffer
- NEW MODEL: $169.99 1.0 TB 7200 rpm with 32 MB data buffer NEW
MODEL: $229.99
"Brought to the market as a topnotch product at an unbeatable value,
OWC Neptune storage solutions are the absolute best bet for any Mac or
PC user looking for high performance on a budget without sacrificing
quality when additional external storage is needed," said Larry
O'Connor, President and CEO, OWC.
OWC Neptune FireWire drives feature a custom Oxford bridge solution,
two six-pin FireWire 400 (1394a) ports for convenient Plug 'n Play
usability, a 7200 rpm drive mechanism, up to 32 MB data buffer and data
transfer rates of up to 400 Mbps. All drives come pre-initialized with
shareware/freeware/public domain software and include a FireWire cable,
Intech HD SpeedTools (Mac), Prosoft DataBackup III (Mac OS X), and
NovaStor NovaBackup (Windows). In addition to a one-year limited
warranty, the premium hard drive mechanisms are further covered by an
additional 4 year replacement warranty.
The OWC Neptune external hard drive solution is available
immediately.
Link: Neptune
FireWire Drives
New Belkin N+ Wireless Router Lets You Attach a
Storage Device to Share and Back Up Files
PR: Belkin introduces its new N+ Wireless Router and N+
Wireless USB Adapter. Featuring a USB port on the back, the N+ Wireless
Router lets you connect a storage device, which allows multiple
computers to easily access documents, videos, and photos on the storage
drive over a secure wireless network. Four Gigabit ports provide the
bandwidth and speed needed for media applications like streaming music
and video.
Ease-of-Use Features:
- Intuitive icons on the front panel turn from blue to amber to alert
you of a problem in your network.
- WiFi Protected Setup™ (WPS) security button on the front
panel provide easy setup.
- Clearly labeled ports on the back of the Router make setup as
simple as possible.
Availability
- Available in October 2008 in the US with launches in Canada,
Europe, Asia, and Australia to follow
N+ Wireless Router (F5D8235-4), $119.99
- USB port to attach storage devices to your network
- Gigabit ports for enhanced wired speeds
- WPS security with the push of a button
- LEDs on front panel display network throughput speeds
- Slim, vertical design takes up minimal space on your desktop while
optimizing wireless performance
- Mac OS and Windows OS support
- WiFi N draft 2.0-certified
- Power-save mode and Energy Star power supply
N+ Wireless USB Adapter (F5D8055), $99.99
- Provides optimal range and distance
- WPS security with the push of a button
Link: Belkin
Belkin Revamps Wireless Router Design with New
Sleek, Vertical Form
PR: Belkin International, Inc., launches a new vertical
design for its line of wireless routers, which includes the G, G+ MIMO,
N, and N+. Intended to take up minimal desktop space, the new vertical
enclosures offer enhanced usability with simple details like labels on
the rear ports. Easy-to-understand icons on the front panel turn to
amber to alert you of problems in your network.
Setting the standard with intuitive usability, Belkin's
innovative designs began with the N1 Wireless Router, boasting a sleek
black finish with blue iconic status LEDs. The N1 Vision Wireless
Router features the same black appearance, clean lines, and a
network-status LCD. The N+ is a natural progression of the two routers,
combining some of the same popular elements such as the blue status
LEDs and speedometer.
The new design is visually pleasing and technically advantageous.
The shape allows for better airflow to keep the Wireless Router cool,
enhancing performance. The antennae are situated atop the Router to
supply and maintain a strong wireless signal.
Availability
- Available in October 2008 in the US with launches in Canada,
Europe, Asia, and Australia to follow
N+ Wireless Router (F5D8235-4), $119.99
- USB port to attach storage devices to your network
- Gigabit ports for enhanced wired speeds
- High-speed wireless connection
- WiFi Protected Setup™ (WPS) security with the push of a
button
- LEDs on front panel display network throughput speeds
- Ideal for: file sharing, streaming high-definition video, online
gaming, VoIP phone calls, and telecommuting
N Wireless Router (F5D8236-4), $79.99
- High-speed wireless connection
- WPS security with the push of a button
- Easy troubleshooting with indicator icons on the front panel
- Ideal for: streaming high-definition video, online gaming, VoIP
phone calls, and telecommuting
G+ MIMO Wireless Router (F5D9231-4), $59.99
- Better wireless performance than basic G
- WPS security with the push of a button
- Easy troubleshooting with indicator icons on the front panel
- Ideal for: streaming music and videos from the Web, file sharing,
and transferring photos
G Wireless Router (F5D7234-4), $39.99
- Simple wireless connectivity for the home or office
- Quick and easy setup
- Ideal for: surfing the Web, emailing, and instant messaging
Link: Belkin
Desktop Mac
Deals
Low End Mac updates the following price trackers monthly:
For deals on current and discontinued 'Books, see our 13" MacBook and MacBook Pro,
MacBook Air, 13" MacBook Pro, 15" MacBook Pro, 17" MacBook Pro, 12" PowerBook G4, 15" PowerBook G4, 17" PowerBook G4, titanium PowerBook G4,
iBook G4, PowerBook G3, and iBook G3 deals.
We also track iPad,
iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle deals.
