Apple has released their third quarter, fiscal 2006 financial report. They sold whopping 1.3 million Macs (50% to new switchers) and 8.1 million iPods. In case you’re wondering, that’s about 1 iPod per second. It’s good to see Apple doing well. Their revenues were US$4.37 billion, and they made a profit of $472 million. That means plenty of money for R&D and new product development. Reports look sunny for next quarter as well. Read more…
Those new Apple MacBooks are really versatile machines. Apple calls them “the superfast, blogging, podcasting, do-everything-out-of-the-box” MacBooks. Did you know that “doing everything” includes making your breakfast? Apparently, the bottom of the MacBook gets so hot that you can actually fry an egg on it. Watch the video and see if you believe it! Read more…
A few months ago, Apple made waves when they released Boot Camp, which allowed you to dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows on the new Intel Macs. Boot Camp is old news now – Parallels is the hot new thing that everyone’s talking about. Parallels is a virtualization engine – you can run Windows (and Windows applications) at the same time as Mac OS X. Where have we heard this before? That’s right – Virtual PC, which is now owned by Microsoft. Parallels is both cheaper and better than Virtual PC. Read more…
If you want a safer computer, get a Mac – so says computer security firm Sophos. This is a welcome change from the fearmongering done by other companies about Mac OS X’s vulnerabilities. Most “computer security” firms would just recommend buying their software! Graham Cluley of Sophos says, “It seems likely that Macs will continue to be the safer place for computer users for some time to come.”
Microsoft has promised that Vista will be a much safer OS compared to Windows XP and it predecessors, but the deadlines for Vista seems to be continually pushed back and features cut as we go along. Read more…
Years after declaring the CRT dead, Apple has finally said goodbye to their last remaining CRT model, the eMac. In its place is a new iMac for Education model, priced at US$899. The new 17-inch widescreen iMac comes with a 1.8GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 512MB RAM, 80GB hard disk, integrated iSight camera, a Combo drive, and integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics chipset (same as those on the MacBooks) instead of the usual ATI X16000 on the other iMacs. Read more…
Phill Ryu has a list of the top 10 most beautiful applications for Mac OS X. He focuses on third party software only, and just about all the applications are single-purpose. I agree with his number one choice – Delicious Library is a gorgeous beast.
Macs have always played prominent roles in movies. Ten years ago, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum saving the earth from alien invaders – with the help of a Powerbook 5300. I would like to wish all Americans everywhere a safe and happy Independence Day.
WriteRoom is a great tool for people who want to concentrate on writing. This is writing at its most basic – just green text on a black background. This means you concentrate on the content, instead of on the formatting. There are no distracting tool bars anywhere, and there’s even a full screen mode that turns your Mac into an 80′s style word processor. Disturbingly, there’s no save button, so you need to copy and paste your final work. Read more…
