In China One in Five Consumers Want a Mac as Their Next PC - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD

"China accounted for 16 percent of Apple’s fourth-quarter sales, or about $4.5 billion, making it the company’s second-largest market after the U.S.. So it should come as no surprise to hear that Apple products are particularly well regarded in the country. But to find that positive sentiment for the Mac has elevated it above all comers there is a bit of an eye-opener.

According to Morgan Stanley’s new China PC Survey, 21 percent of consumers considering the purchase of a new PC would like it to be a Mac. That’s more than said the same of Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Sony, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. It’s also significantly more than the Mac’s current market share in the country, which hovers around about 5 percent."
In China One in Five Consumers Want a Mac as Their Next PC - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD

Crowds had been lining up for more than 24 hours outside Hong Kong’s flagship Apple store. Below, video of that enormous queue.

Microsoft Brings First Office App To iPhone

Insurers Fight Speech-Impairment Remedy

"Kara Lynn has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., which has attacked the muscles around her mouth and throat, removing her ability to speak. A couple of years ago, she spent more than $8,000 to buy a computer, approved by Medicare, that turns typed words into speech that her family, friends and doctors can hear.

Under government insurance requirements, the maker of the PC, which ran ordinary Microsoft Windows software, had to block any nonspeech functions, like sending e-mail or browsing the Web.

Dismayed by the PC’s limitations and clunky design, Ms. Lynn turned to a $300 iPhone 3G from Apple running $150 text-to-speech software. Ms. Lynn, who is 48 and lives in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said it worked better and let her “wear her voice” around her neck while snuggling with her 5-year-old son, Aiden, who has Down syndrome.

Medicare and private health insurers decline to cover cheap devices like iPhones and netbook PCs that can help the speech-impaired, despite their usefulness and lower cost.

Instead, public and private insurers insist that, if Ms. Lynn and others like her want insurance to pay, they must spend 10 to 20 times as much for dedicated, proprietary devices that can do far less.

The logic: Insurance is supposed to cover medical devices, and smartphones or PCs can be used for nonmedical purposes, like playing video games or Web browsing.

Disease experts say companies like DynaVox and Prentke Romich make many sophisticated, helpful products. Still, advocates argue, advances in computing and easy-to use speech software have opened doors to use cheap mainstream alternatives. Indeed, the price drops have made it possible for A.L.S. assistance groups to buy dozens of netbooks, install specialized software like Proloquo2Go and lend them to clients."

Read the full story at the New York Times by ASHLEE VANCE

Many Computer Users Skip Routine Maintenance

"It probably comes as no surprise, but it seems most people ignore routine computer maintenance and only think about it when disaster strikes. You know, like falling victim to more than 3,000 viruses. At once."

Read the full story at http://hothardware.com.

Putting Apple Displays Under the Microscope

A widescreen Apple display looks nice alongside a Mac Pro, with their matching aluminum constructions. But beyond mere design aesthetics, what's the value proposition for Apple's lineup of pricey monitors? They definitely fall into the higher end of the market, so how do their features and specs compare with rivals' elite offerings?

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) gets a lot of criticism for the seemingly high retail prices of its Macs. While the PC and Mac pundits alike can spec out competing solutions and argue over value in terms of software and operating systems, what about displays? Computer monitors don't ship with an operating system and free productivity software -- displays are about as pure a hardware play as you can get these days. So who's buying Apple displays, and why would someone buy an pricey Apple display, anyway?

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Help Your PC Friends Through The Conficker Virus/Worm Tomorrow

"Millions of PCs the world over are infected with Conficker. Yes, your Mac is safe. No, that guy who continues give you such insights as "Macs suck" since 1994 is not safe. So let's do our best not to snicker."

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Mac vs. PC

Nick Greenlee has made a fantastic video showing off his talents. Take a look at the full video here.

Review: Lenovo Ideapad S10 Netbook

Every sign we've seen thus far leads us to believe that netbooks are going to be very popular this holiday shopping season. With good reason, too – they fill a void which has existed since the dawn of mobile computing. Truly cost efficient, rugged, little notebook computers with enough processing power and screen resolution to get basic tasks done – nothing more, nothing less. Given that pocketbooks are hurting in the current economic climate, these new low-cost mobile systems become that much more attractive, besides being a downright exciting product category.

Many of the large-scale PC vendors have already developed, or are developing a netbook product for the end of the year. Dell’s Inspirion Mini 9, along with the Asus Eee PC and MSI’s new Wind netbooks appear to be some of the more popular models. As this year comes to a close, the pace of netbooks hitting the market has certainly accelerated, and we expect that to continue for the next month or so. One of the more exciting netbook models that came to market just recently is Lenovo’s IdeaPad S series.

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There's nothing easy about letting Apple into the enterprise

Mac veterans say Apple doesn't always act like other technology partners. Today, half of Serena's workers opt for the MacBook over a Lenovo laptop according to their senior manager of worldwide IT operations. Not only have support calls declined, but users are also grateful for the choice.

In terms of enterprise penetration, Forrester Research says that Mac OS use rose from 3.6% in October 2007 to 4.5% in June 2008, based on more than 50,000 clients connecting to Forrester's Web site. And according to in Steve Jobs in his keynote address at the Apple World Wide Developer's Conference in June, 35% of the Fortune 500 are testing the iPhone's new enterprise features, including Walt Disney, Oracle, Genentech and Kraft Foods. Jobs also claimed that more than 250,000 developers have downloaded the iPhone SDK.

Outside of Apple's own efforts, five software companies formed an alliance in June to promote the use of the Mac in the corporate environment, including Atempo, Centrify, Group Logic , LANrev and Parallels.

The group, dubbed the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, says its products enable IT organizations to deploy, integrate and manage Macs, using the same standard tools used for Windows. It claims that enterprises can achieve the same level of control, security, policy compliance and services that they currently have with their Windows platforms.

Meanwhile, some users contend that the perception that Macintoshes don't play well in the enterprise is largely exaggerated. Ben Hanes, senior systems analyst at Children's Hospital of Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), in Oakland, Calif., has been supporting Macintoshes for more than five years. Half of the research organization's 600 computers are Macs, with about two dozen running Parallels virtualization software.

Hanes' data center is a mix of Apple and Windows servers, with Windows running on the database and file servers, and Apple Xserves running applications that touch the Web, including a mail server, a Web server and an iChat server. "I definitely stick to the philosophy that whatever is on the perimeter is Apple technology because it's proven to be secure," Hanes says.

According to Hanes, the Macintosh desktops plug into the network "just like a PC," thanks to products like ExtremeZ-IP from Group Logic, which enable file and printer sharing between Mac desktops and the Windows server. Hanes says he has successfully integrated Macintosh desktops with Active Directory, using the "golden triangle" strategy, in which Mac clients authenticate with Active Directory while getting managed group settings from a Mac OS X server.

Hanes believes his team has been successful deploying Apple technology in part because they conduct a lot of research, apply a lot of scrutiny before making final decisions, and keep an open mind about what they use, including open-source technology. For instance, he says it took a year to establish that the team would use Communigate Pro from Communigate Systems for its e-mail server. And for its antivirus platform, CHORI selected Sophos because it enables both Macs and PCs to be viewed on one console.

Hanes does use Apple's Xserve RAID technology but says the company's move away from storage doesn't concern him. "They've certified EMC software to work with Apple," he says, "so switching will be a trivial thing."

As for service, Hanes says he has certified CHORI as a self-service shop, which means it gets the same rights as a Macintosh repair consultant, such as next-day parts delivery. You need to have 150 Macintoshes to qualify, he says. Hanes also participates in Apple beta programs and NDAs.
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Microsoft Admits What Went Wrong with Vista!

"Way back in January 2007, after years of hype and anticipation, Microsoft unveiled Windows Vista to a decidedly lukewarm reception by the PC community, IT pros, and tech journalists alike. Instead of a revolutionary next-generation OS that was chock-full of new features, the Windows community got an underwhelming rehash with very little going for it. Oh, and Vista was plagued with performance and incompatibility problems to boot.

Since then, the PC community has taken the idea that Vista is underwhelming and turned it into a mantra. We’ve all heard about Vista’s poor network transfer speeds, low frame rates in games, and driver issues—shoot, we’ve experienced the problems ourselves. But over the last 18 months, Vista has undergone myriad changes, including the release of Service Pack 1, making the OS worth a second look. It’s time we determine once and for all whether we should stick with XP for the next 18 months while we wait for Windows 7. But before we answer that question, let’s review exactly what’s wrong with Windows Vista."

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Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard 64-Bit: Santa Rosa PC Swindle

Snow Leopard's across-the-board leap to 64-bits, from the kernel to all of its bundled apps, will do more than just make more memory available. It also exposes a great PC swindle and highlights Apple's lead in 64-bit computing. Here's why. "Microsoft even changed the way the OS reports the amount of RAM available; rumor is, due to pressure from OEMs," the developer told us. "In Vista and prior, it reported usable RAM, while in SP1 they changed it to report installed RAM ignoring the fact that much of the RAM was unusable due to overlap with video memory." And so many PC users are installing 4GB of RAM in their PCs and thinking that it is being used by the system, when in fact it is no more beneficial than if the RAM were simply poked halfway into the CD slot.

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