mac

Apple's Mac sales for the first month of the year could indicate that the economy is finally catching up with the company.

Piper Jaffray, known as one of the most Apple-positive analyst firms in the financial industry, released a report Tuesday indicating that based on a month's worth of data from NPD Group, Mac sales are on a pace to decline on a year-over-year basis for the first time in six years. Piper is projecting that Apple will sell between 2 million and 2.2 million Macs during the quarter, compared to 2.3 million Macs sold in … Read more

Nvidia is working with top-10 PC makers to bring its graphics chips for the first time to Netbooks, according to an executive at the company. And an important part of this push is getting its silicon working with Windows 7, a more Netbook-friendly operating system than Vista.

This week, Nvidia released Windows 7 beta drivers for the "Ion" Netbook silicon that it's handing over to customers. In conjunction, Nvidia demonstrated in Taiwan this week applications running on Windows 7. Nvidia also announced that its Ion platform has been certified on Windows Vista.

The Ion chipset is based … Read more

Google is coming a bit closer to releasing a working version of its Chrome browser for Mac.

Programmers for the company had been building an engine that could render Web pages, but it only ran within a simple framework called the test shell. Now they've begun hooking up the renderer to a full-fledged browser, which among other things can handle multiple tasks at the same time. That's key for a real application, especially one such as Chrome that isolates each browser tab into its own computing process.

The result of the work: a screenshot of Chrome running on Mac OS X … Read more

Apple released a Mac OS X security update on Thursday that contains fixes for more than two dozen vulnerabilities, including one in Safari RSS that could lead to arbitrary code execution and one in Remote Apple Events that could disclose sensitive information.

Also fixed are a vulnerability in AFP Server that could trigger a denial of service and vulnerabilities in Apple Pixlet Video, ClamAV, CoreText, Python, SMB, and X11 that could lead to arbitrary code execution. Another fix closes a hole in Printing that could allow a local user to get system privileges and one in DS Tools that could … Read more

Apple has started rolling out a major redesign of its retail stores in order to focus on software and switchers.

IfoAppleStore, which tracks the Apple retail operation almost as closely as Cupertino does, first noticed the switch. It's already underway at the downtown San Francisco Apple store, with signs placed near the front of the store designed to entice new converts to the Mac with slogans like "It's easy to love a Mac" that highlight the differences between Windows PCs and Macs.

Apple's retail operation is a very important part of its marketing strategy, beyond … Read more

Like a lot of office workers, Rafe Needleman coveted a Macintosh but his various work assignments forced him to spend 20 years banging away on a PC. But that was then and this is now. Rafe finally got his wish--but that didn't mean he had to dump his old PC. In fact, he's come up with a way to use both machines to maximum effect on the same desk.

Today's stories:

YouTube adds purchases using Google Checkout

Together in harmony: Mac and PC

Sources: Windows 7 moving toward 2009 release

Mobile WiFi usage on the rise… Read more

Shortly after I bought a MacBook, I posted an (unpopular) article in which I vented about learning and using the new platform. I'd been a Windows guy for 20 years, and although I knew a transition to OS X would require effort, I didn't expect it to be quite so frustrating.

But I have since found a way forward with the machine. Rather than trying to jam it into my well-established workflow and have it replace my Windows laptop, I'm now trying to use it alongside my PC. It's also the only computer I travel with. And with a few tricks, I've found it to be a positive and productive experience.

Side by side on my computer keyboard (oh Lord...) At work, I like using the MacBook for instant messaging, Twitter, Skype, for researching and browsing, and for anything involving video. My old ThinkPad is slow, and offloading these apps from it during the day is a small help. I still use my PC for e-mail, since there's as yet no reasonable replacement for Outlook if you work at a company that runs Exchange servers, and for writing and taking notes, since my fingers know their way around a PC keyboard.

Although I'm using two computers, I use only one primary keyboard. Thanks to the old open-source app Synergy (and the Mac version called SyngergyKM), I can control the Mac from the keyboard that's connected to my ThinkPad. I have my MacBook on a stand to the right of my Thinkpad's external monitor (recommended: the Rain Design mStand), and when I drag the mouse off the right edge of the Windows screen, it appears on the MacBook. The keyboard then controls the Mac as well. Even better, copy and paste works between the machines (although, awkwardly, the keystrokes for copy and paste are different on a PC and Mac--I'm still learning to adapt to that). … Read more

Buried in an insightful Ars Technica article on digital music is this casual throwaway line, "At Princeton, Macs accounted for an astonishing 40 percent of all student computers in 2008."

Forty percent?!? That's amazing. In the general operating-system market, according to Net Applications, Apple commands nearly 10 percent of the personal-computer market, which shows great progress over its formerly anemic market share but which still is a distant second place to Microsoft's 88 percent share.

But that's today. The funny thing about students is that they eventually graduate. With graduation comes jobs, which provide discretionary income to buy more Macs. … Read more

If you use a Mac and a PC, we have some tips for making the combination smooth and in sync.