Survey of computer use over 12 years from the University of Virgina. The trends are clear. From 1997 to today nearly all students own a computer, notebooks out number desktop PCs, and—drum roll—Mac market share is nearly 40-percent.Each computing inventory is the compilation of statistics... Read More »

The Macalope on Walmart as a potential Mac retailer.The thought of a premium brand like the Mac being pushed through a high-volume retailer with a logo that looks suspiciously like the end part of the human digestive tract may lead you to some uncomfortable analogies.Is the iPhone a less premium... Read More »

Andy Ihnatko loves Verizon’s new MiFi. What? You’re still stuck on WiFi?It’s a black, iPod-sized device with its own battery. It has just one button. A green light comes on when you press it, indicating that the MiFi is powered on. A second green light starts blinking, indicating... Read More »

Daniel Eran Dilger on the ‘safe vs. secure’ issue of Mac vs. Windows. Chicken Little media pundits have been predicting a barrage of malware for Mac users which has never materialized. The semantics of safety and security aside, are Macs, compared to Windows PCs, safe and secure?The real... Read More »

Dwight Silverman on the swirling speculation about a new Microsoft Zune HD or an Apple iPad; both smaller than a netbook, but larger than an iPhone or iPod touch.In looking at these two developments in parallel - and applying the important caveat that neither are formally announced products, and this... Read More »

Time busts out a list of high profile technology failures of the past 10 years. Microsoft is on the list twice; at #1 and #7. No Macs made the list.To make the list, a product had to be widely recognized and widely available to customers. It had to be aimed at a large global market. It had to be technologically... Read More »

With no major viruses or malware outbreaks for Mac OS X, what’s the point of reviewing Mac anti-virus utilities? Scott McNulty:There have been no major viruses or malware outbreaks for Mac OS X since its introduction in March 2001 (kind of amazing, actually). That excellent track record doesn’t... Read More »

Notebooks, even Macs, get stolen. Once it’s gone, what can you do to get it back? Orbicule’s Undercover. Petter Roisland’s MacBook was stolen, but Undercover provided enough information to track down the thieves:Early this morning I received a new email from Orbicule. This time they... Read More »

Have you had an OS X update go bad on your Mac? What did you do? Macworld’s Rob Griffiths had an update that died, leaving his iMac dead in the water; stuck CD, and unable to start up:Finally, I remembered the old standby, FireWire Target Disk Mode... I have no idea what went wrong the first... Read More »

PC Magazine on the differences between how Apple and Microsoft release a new operating system version. It’s night vs. day.Microsoft releases the public betas in order to get feedback and telemetry from testers to improve the product. Apple, on the other hand, will drop its new OS down from heaven... Read More »

Beleaguered Microsoft is feeling the pinch of Mac market share gains. The response? Television commercials featuring laptop hunters who bypass the Mac for less expensive, lower powered PCs.Apple’s response? Another targeted barrage of Get a Mac commercials which skewer PCs on customer care,... Read More »

Microsoft says Windows 7 should ship to customers by the end of 2009.Although the company has until now maintained that the OS would ship near the three-year anniversary of Vista, or early 2010, senior Windows VP Bill Veghte now says he expects the update to ship before the holidays.My bet is that... Read More »

Remember those faulty Nvidia graphic chips in Apple’s MacBook line? They’re also in Dell and HP notebooks and the subject of a class action lawsuit against Nvidia after their so-called remedy failed to satisfy.Worse, this ‘remedy’ fails to solve the actual problem. Instead,... Read More »

Ryan Naraine on Apple’s hire of Ivan Krstic to beef up security in OS X. Krstic was director of security architecture at One Laptop per Child and designed the highly touted Bitfrost security spec.His hiring comes at a crucial time for a company that ties security to its marketing campaigns despite... Read More »