os

Google was born on the Web and is increasingly giving Microsoft fits by forcing the decades-old software giant to compete on Google's terms. Like open source. Like cloud computing.

Microsoft may shore up its fortunes in the short term with a successful Windows 7 launch. But in the long term, its very success with outdated "desktop" products threaten to cede the market to Google.

It's not really fair to Microsoft. Microsoft is a victim of its own success, needing to cater to its existing clientele with each new release, in true "Innovator's Dilemma" … Read more

Many people would love to take apart their computers to see the internal components if only it wouldn't jeopardize the system's warranty and potentially break it. This is not only interesting, it's also quite useful for instances where you need to re-seat a loose system component or replace it. To satisfy these curiosities, various sites such as iFixIt and PowerBookMedic have extensive take-apart guides with pictures and video.… Read more

Psystar, the clone company Apple is suing for selling generic hardware with the Mac OS pre-installed, is expanding its business to include selling software that will allow anyone to install Apple's operating system.

Psystar said on Thursday that its Rebel EFI suite is available for download from its Web site. The software will allow anyone to install any modern operating system on their computer, including Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

According to the company, the software is compatible with the Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 or machines running the Xeon Nehalem CPU.

A demo … Read more

A number of users have found a problem with recent iMac models where the systems seem to hang at the grey boot screen with the Apple logo. Additionally, if these computers are put to sleep they sometimes will not come out of sleep, requiring a hard reset of the computer.… Read more

Apple's support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in Snow Leopard has been a welcome addition to the Mac OS, especially in corporate environments. Some people implementing Exchange in Mail have been running into a problem where the connection to the server will either hang or go offline.… Read more

A few people have noticed a problem in Snow Leopard where depending on the view being used, the Finder may not properly manage files on shared SMB resources. Specifically, when in column view in the Finder, while files and folders can be created and deleted, folders cannot be renamed. In some instances doing this leads to the Finder crashing and relaunching but for the most part folders just will not rename.… Read more

A small thread on the Apple discussion boards talks about a problem one user is having with a small white rectangle appearing over the mouse pointer. It does not follow the pointer, but instead will just appear when the mouse is still and then may persist after the mouse has been moved.… Read more

Yesterday we discussed a problem where people were not able to invoke the large-type window for displaying full-screen contact information via the Address Book dashboard widget. While one possibility could be the aforementioned problems with the widget and Dashboard itself, since this problem has to do only with the Address Book widget for many people it indicates an error with the Address Book components, including the framework, the Address Book application, and the widget itself.… Read more

Some people are reporting that after upgrading to Snow Leopard their Address Book dashboard widget is no longer functioning properly. The widget will open and you can search for contacts properly, but when you try to present a phone number in large text by clicking on it the number will not display.… Read more