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News & Opinion
Rumor Roundup
Products & Services
News & Opinion
Is Snow Leopard Becoming Apple's Windows XP?
Computerworld's Gregg Keizer observes that while one-in-four Macs
now runs OS X 10.8 Mountain
Lion, there are indications that OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which
originally shipped in August 2009, may be in the process of becoming
the Mac's equivalent of Microsoft's Windows XP, a Windows version,
originally released in 2001, that some 40% of Windows users have
stubbornly refused to upgrade from.
Keizer notes that the upgrade/adoption rate for Mountain Lion,
released on July 25 for the friendly price of $19.99, has not kept pace
with the uptake trajectory of Apple's last two operating system
editions, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and OS X 10.7 Lion, which had both grabbed
slightly larger market shares after three full months of
availability.
Publisher's note: The graph below shows Low End Mac site traffic by
percentage of Intel Mac users for OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 since April
2011. According to our data, Lion reached 33.95% of that market in the
fourth month after release, while Mountain Lion reached 34.31% in the
same time frame. Note how after steadily declining after the release of
Lion, Snow Leopard has maintained 27-28% over the past three months
while Lion has fallen from 55% to 24% since Mountain Lion's release.
dk
Link: OS X Snow Leopard
Shows Signs of Becoming Apple's XP
In Praise of Old-fashioned PCs
Tech.Pinions' Steve Wildstrom says that while he's a big fan of
tablets, especially the iPad, and finds himself spending more and more
time with a tablet and less and less with a traditional computer, he
can't imagine getting by without a Windows PC or a Mac - which is why
he contends that though the market for traditional computers will
shrink, they aren't going away.
Wildstrom references Steve Jobs' famously 2010 observation that that
PC was like a truck and the iPad like a car, and most people don't need
trucks. He was technically right, but Wildstrom thinks Jobs seriously
underestimated the importance of trucks, noting that nearly half of all
vehicles sold in the United States are light trucks.
He notes that while content creation in an iPad is possible, it
isn't much fun. Like most content creators, he regularly works with
multiple windows open, often cutting and pasting material from one app
to another, and you can't do the former at all or easily do the latter
on an iPad.
He concludes that three things PCs have and tablets lack are
processing power, big displays and storage capacity, contending, as
many serious computer users do, that virtually unlimited storage in the
Cloud is not a satisfactory substitute for data stored on local media,
noting that he wants local copies of his important content, including
music and photos, as well as thousands of documents.
Editor's note: Me too. cm
Publisher's note: And me too. dk
Link: In Praise of
Old-fashioned PCs
How to Cope with FireWire's Demise
InfoWorld's Mel Beckman notes that the new 15" and 13" MacBook Pros
with Retina Display have no FireWire port; it has been replaced by USB
3.0, which provides equivalent performance and is widely used in recent
Windows PCs. It's clear that FireWire will be eliminated on future
Macs, which will be an inconvenience (or worse) for folks with a lot of
FireWire peripherals, and Intel's Thunderbolt technology introduced 18
months ago in almost all new Mac models is still too rare and
expensive.
So what can users with significant investments in FireWire devices
do when upgrading to new Macs? Beckman notes that there are solutions,
but all have drawbacks, which you must carefully weigh before
buying.
Editor's note: I've adjusted to FireWire's long fade long ago,
having used a FireWire-less aluminum Unibody MacBook as my
anchor computer since early 2009. FireWire was restored to the 13"
unibody form factor with the subsequent revision, which was dubbed a
MacBook Pro, but too late for me. I've learned to get along without
FireWire - but not happily. cm
Link: FireWire's Demise:
Here's How to Cope
Survival Guide for Macs in the Workplace
The Register's Trevor Pott notes that Macs are ready for the
enterprise and can already be found in organizations of all sizes, with
even IBM having more than 10,000 MacBooks deployed.
With so many organizations deploying so many Macs, Pott says
corporate IT departments can no longer lean on the psychological crutch
that Macs are in service simply to stroke the egos or desires of a
handful of top brass. He observes that in his experience business Mac
usage is being driven by employees looking for comfortable and familiar
environments - the results of BYOD policies at IBM, Intel, Google, and
other large organizations - and that when everyday people are given the
choice of computer platforms, they don't all choose the same thing.
Pott says that while coaxing Macs into playing along with directory
services has in the past sometimes proven to be a small challenge,
fortunately for sysadmins everywhere, this has changed with recent
releases.
Link: So You Want an
Office of Apple Macs - Here's a Survival Guide
Apple's Eddy Cue Joins Ferrari Board
PR: Ferrari's board of
directors met this week under the chairmanship of Luca di Montezemolo
to examine the company's financial results for the first nine months of
2012, and to announce that Eddie Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President
Internet Software and Services who oversees Apple's content stores
including the iTunes Store, the revolutionary App Store and the
iBookstore, as well as Siri, Maps, iAd and Apple's innovative iCloud
services. Mr. Cue is a 23-year Apple veteran and played a major role in
creating the Apple online store in 1998, the iTunes Music Store in
2003, and the App Store in 2008. He earned a bachelor's degree in
Computer Science and Economics at Duke University.
Luca di Montezemolo announced the addition of a new Ferrari board
member: "I am delighted that Eddy Cue, one of the main driving forces
behind Apple's range of revolutionary products, has now joined our
board. His huge experience in the dynamic, innovative world of the
Internet will be of great assistance to us."
"I am pleased and proud to become a member of the board," Cue said.
"I have personally dreamed of owning a Ferrari since I was 8 years old
and have been lucky to be an owner for the past 5 years. I continue to
be awed by the world-class design and engineering that only Ferrari can
do," said Eddie Cue, commenting on his nomination to the board.
Link: Ferrari Announces
Record Results for First Nine Months of 2012
Rumor Roundup
Apple Planning to Drop Intel for ARM in Future
Macs?
A major report by Bloomberg's Adam Satariano, Peter Burrows, and Ian
King says that according to insider sources, Apple is studying
strategies to replace the Intel processors it's used in its Macs since
early 2006 with a version of the in-house designed, ARM-based A-series
chips based on technology from Cambridge, England-based ARM Holdings
Plc (ARM) that it uses in the iPhone and iPad.
The article notes that Apple engineers have grown confident that its
A-series CPUs will eventually be powerful enough to run desktop and
laptop computers.
Such a switch (which the Bloomberg article says is unlikely in the
immediate to near term) would be disruptive, to say the least, and
would eliminate the advantage of Macs being able to run Microsoft's
Windows OS natively, which has been a major factor in the Mac's
substantial market share gains since 2006.
However, other recent rumors contend that continued convergence of
OS X with Apple's iOS mobile operating system will continue toward the
eventual objective of a merger of the two OSs, which would make
standardization on common processor silicon a logical (or perhaps even
necessary) step.
Publisher's note: There are several hurdles the A-series chips need
to overcome before they'll be ready to replace even the slowest Intel
CPUs currently in use at Apple. The 1.4 GHz A6X processor found in the
iPad 4 has a Geekbench score of 1753, while the 1.7 GHz MacBook
Air, Apple's least powerful current model, rates 6157 - about a 4:1
performance difference. Further, Macs have been using 64-bit Intel CPUs
since late 2006, while current ARM designs have been exclusively 32-bit
until recently (ARM announced
its first 64-bit processors at the end of October). Finally,
there's the matter of being able to run legacy software: If ARM chips
can't emulate x86 Macs with decent performance, few Mac users will want
to make the switch. Historically, Apple has gone out of its way to
include legacy software support (680x0 code on PowerPC CPUs, and later
PPC support on Intel x86 chips until the release of OS X 10.7
Lion). Any switch to ARM for Macs is in the distant future.
dk
Link: Apple Said to Be
Exploring Switch from Intel for Mac
Products & Services
Master Your Mac: Tweak, Customize, and
Secure OS X
PR:
Macs are great for beginners, because the basics are easy. The
challenge comes when you want OS X to do things your way. For Mac users
who want to travel beyond the basics, Master Your Mac is here to
help.
"The great thing about OS X is that a complete beginner can turn on
a new Mac and start surfing the web in less than five minutes," says
author Matt Cone. "But things get tricky after that. How do you connect
another monitor or create new trackpad gestures? I wrote Master Your
Mac to teach people how to do things in OS X that they didn't
even know were possible."
Master Your Mac takes users to the next level with tutorials on how
to change hidden defaults, enable undocumented features, repair disk
permissions to improve performance, monitor their systems, and even
create a bootable USB drive for emergencies. Readers will also learn
how to:
- Automate tasks with AppleScript, triggers, and Automator
macros
- Handle massive amounts of email and media with synced accounts and
spam filters
- Turn their Macs into a file or Web server
- Create Safari extensions and use site-specific browsers
- Secure their Macs with firmware passwords, firewalls, FileVault
full-disk encryption
- Install the best apps to boost productivity and fix everyday
annoyances
Sure, anyone can use a Mac fresh out of its pretty packaging, but
that's no fun. Master Your Mac promises to teach readers to
customize their machines to make them work their way. Covers OS X
Mountain Lion.
Matt Cone is a freelance writer specializing in Apple hardware and
software, and has been a Mac user for over 20 years. A former
ghostwriter for some of Apple's most notable instructors, Cone founded
Macinstruct.com in 1999, one of the most popular online destinations
for OS X tutorials.
Link: Master Your
Mac (currently $21.86 at Amazon.com;
