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News & Opinion
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Software
News & Opinion
HP Retakes Top Spot in PC Market from Apple when
Tablets Are Included
PR: According to the latest figures published by analyst firm
Canalys, which unlike some of its competitors includes tablet computer
sales in its overall PC sales metrics, HP retook the worldwide client
PC market lead in Q1 2012. Apple had ousted the longtime PC market
leader in Q4 2011, thanks largely to holiday-season boosted record iPad
shipments (in excess of 15 million units).
In Q1, however, Apple shipped 11.8 million iPads, bringing its total
client PC sales for the quarter to 15.8 million. HP's shipments were
higher by around 40,000 units, according to Canalys estimates; just
enough to give it the lead. Lenovo took third place, logging impressive
year-on-year growth of 50%. Acer and Dell took the remaining top-five
places, but with shipments down from the same quarter a year ago. The
total client PC market grew by 21% to 107 million units. Importantly,
while the pad category exhibited the highest growth more than 200% year
on year notebook and desktop PC shipments were up too, rising 11% and
8% respectively. Netbook shipments, however, were down 34% on the
year-ago quarter the sixth such fall in succession.
"Most of the leading PC vendors have done a reasonable job of
offsetting the declines in their netbook shipments over the past year
with increased pad business," says Canalys Research Analyst Tom Evans.
"Samsung and Lenovo are two that stand out in terms of substantially
increasing overall volume, though Asus has performed well too. The
challenge is breaking out into the really big volumes to challenge the
leaders Apple and Amazon. So far, only Samsung has shown it can
routinely ship more than a million pads a quarter."
Globally, Canalys reports that pads (its term for tablets)
represented 19% of all client PC shipments in Q1, up substantially from
7% a year ago, but down on the 22% recorded in Q4 2011. Netbooks have
fallen to 5% from a high of 13% two years ago. Notebooks represented
just under half of the overall PC market by units.
Looking at overall client PC shipments by region, Canalys estimates
that North America grew 31% year-on-year, compared to 19% for both EMEA
(Europe, Middle East and Africa) and Asia-Pacific. Latin American
growth lagged at only 10%. But Canalys points out that the growth in
North America was being boosted by pads much more than in the other
regions.
"If you look at the US, pads are approaching 40% of all client PC
shipments," Canalys VP and Principal Analyst Chris Jones notes. "The
rest of the market here was down slightly in Q1. The pad proposition
for US consumers is very strong thanks to the wider choice in content
and apps and the impact on the other categories is more severe."
In summary, despite some positive signs in Q1, PC vendors face
ongoing uncertainty in the coming quarters. Turbulence in the economy
means the consumer market in many countries remains a cause for
concern. Q2 is expected to be soft, with Taiwanese notebook ODMs having
reported a decline in shipments in April. This will improve as the
channel sells out older products and vendors refresh their portfolios
with models based on Intel's Ivy Bridge processors. The big transition
will take place in the second half of the year with Microsoft's launch
of Windows 8. This will lead many consumers to delay new PC purchases
into Q4. But by then thin and light laptops will be approaching
mainstream price points and a new wave of pads, based on Microsoft's
new OS, will be hitting the market. Positive reception to Windows 8, on
all PC form factors, is critical. Assuming this scenario plays out as
anticipated, PC vendors will be able to look forward to 2013 with
renewed optimism.
A big question for Apple, however, is how profoundly Window 8
tablets will change the game and eat into the iPad's current
overwhelming dominance of the category.
Link: HP
Regains Top Spot in Client PC Market
iPad May Kill Laptops and Save Desktops
Tech.pinions' Steve Wildstrom thinks that the iPad and other tablet
computers pose an existential threat to the laptop, but ironically may
provide a new lease on life for the recently largely-ignored desktop
PC.
Wildstrom argues from a premise that a good tablet is all the
computer most people need, and that the biggest weakness of tablets -
lack of local storage - is in his estimation being solved in the Cloud,
while for times you want to write more than is comfortable with the
onscreen keyboard, a lightweight Bluetooth keyboard does the trick.
Wildstrom acknowledges that he frequently works on complex documents
with a large number of windows open at one time, does a fair amount of
research, edits video, and works on databases, and he concedes that
these are tasks that range from inconvenient to impossible on an iPad,
so he still has both a Windows 7 desktop and a 27" iMac - but uses
his laptops less and less.
Link: The iPad May Kill
Laptops and Save the Desktop
Mac Pro Delay Foreshadows Update Next Week?
Hardmac's Lionel thinks that because Apple is still not ready to
release a new Mac Pro model, it remains unclear if the current
professional desktop Mac will ever be updated. However, he says he's
received a a tip indicating that the shipping delay for the current Mac
Pro has been extended from "immediately available" to around 5-7 days,
and he wonders if that could be the sign of a Mac Pro update next
week.
Link:
Mac Pro: Delayed Shipping Date for an Update Next Week?
New Intel Xeon CPUs: Missing Component for the New
Mac Pro?
Hardmac's Lionel also notes that last March, Intel released its
Sandy Bridge Xeon CPUs, which were expected to find their way into a
future hypothetical update of the Mac Pro, and cites a list of
available Intel processors posted by CPU World as evidence Apple has
more than enough choice in Sandy Bridge Xeon CPUs to finally deliver
the new Mac Pro.
Link: New Xeon from
Intel: The Missing Component for the New Mac Pro!?
Intel Xeon E5-2400 CPU Availability and Prices
CPU World's Gennadiy Shvets reports that this quarter Intel will
launch the first two Xeon E5 families for socket 2011, followed by
E5-2400 series next quarter. E5-2400 processors will work in single-
and dual-CPU systems, and they will utilize socket 1356, which supports
only three memory channels (one fewer than socket 2011) and only one
QPI link. He had already reported on specifications of Xeons from
E5-2400 series, and now he has more details on their pricing.
Prices and specifications of E5-2400 processors, expected in Q2
2012.
Link: Prices of Xeon
E5-2400 CPUs
Third-Party Thunderbolt Cables Still Expensive
MacFixIt's Topher Kessler notes that Apple's $49 2m (6.6')
Thunderbolt cable has been criticized as expensive, but a new one
available from Elgato (see below) is in fact more
expensive.
Link: Thunderbolt
Cables Prove Expensive to Make Cheaply
Faulty GeForce 8800GT? Bake It!
Hardmac's Lionel says that with the Nvidia GeForce 8600M and 8800
GPUs used in certain model MacBook Pros, customers drew bad numbers.
One of the materials used by Nvidia in manufacturing those GPUs turned
out to be unstable and did not last long enough. The soldering material
becomes degraded, contacts are lost, and the card doesn't work
anymore.
He notes that Apple forced Nvidia to recognize this issue and
subsequently took care of a recall of numerous faulty MacBook Pros, but
nothing has been done for users of Mac Pros that shipped with GeForce
8800GT graphics cards that have stopped working with time. One user
posted a video explaining a rather radical and extreme - but in his
case successful - procedure to revive such cards using his kitchen
oven.
Your mileage may vary. If so inclined, proceed at your own risk.
Link: Faulty GeForce
8800 GT: Let's Cook It!!
Products & Services
2.5" Hard Drive/SSD Install Kit for 2011 Mac
mini
PR: Running out of storage space in your 2011 Mac mini or looking to
improve performance 
with an OWC SSD? Now you can
add a second 9.5mm (or smaller) 2.5" SATA hard drive or Solid
State Drive (sold separately) to your 2011 Mac mini with this OWC
upgrade kit.
Note that technical support for this DIY product consists only of a
video linked from the product page.
OWC SSD/2.5" Hard Drive installation Kit for Mac mini 2011 Models
sells for $49.99.
Link: OWC SSD/2.5" Hard
Drive installation Kit for Mac mini 2011 Models
Elgato Thunderbolt Cable Now
Available
PR: Thunderbolt delivers the fastest and most advanced
input/output technology for personal computers while relying on a
connector only half the size of a standard USB port. However, it's more
than just a cable. Behind the scenes, the Thunderbolt interface
features sophisticated cable technology in the form of specialized
embedded microchips that enable the cable to actively ensure optimal
throughput at all times, making it essentially a tiny computer in its
own right.
The Elgato Thunderbolt Cable integrates sophisticated
Thunderbolt technology in a highly flexible cable specifically designed
for mobile use. With a length of only 0.5m/1.6', it is an ideal
companion to the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD or any other
Thunderbolt-equipped peripheral that you want to connect to your Mac or
Windows PC.
The The Elgato Thunderbolt Cable will be available on May 4th for
$59.95, and additionally will included for free with every purchase of
Elgato's Thunderbolt SSD until May 6, 2012.
Link: Elgato Thunderbolt
Cable (also
available from Amazon.com)
Software
Free GrandPerspective App Graphically Displays Your
Disk Usage
PR: GrandPerspective is a small utility application for Mac
OS X that graphically shows the disk usage within a file system. It can
help you to manage your disk, as you can easily spot which
files and folders take up the most space. GrandPerspective uses a
so-called tree map for visualization. 
Each file is shown as a rectangle with an area
proportional to the file's size. Files in the same folder appear
together, but their placement is otherwise arbitrary.
GrandPerspective 1.5.0 has been released and is available for
download. It features much requested new functionality: the ability to
color files based on their creation time, modification time, or time of
last access. For other improvements and bug fixes included in this
release, check out the release notes.
System requirements: Mac OS X (Universal Binary)
GrandPerspective is freeware/donationware.
Link: GrandPerspective
Desktop Mac
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