Apple Archive

During the conference call yesterday about Apple's financial results, COO Tim Cook reiterated Apple's negative stance towards the netbook market. While many of us might want to see a relatively cheap Apple netbook with Mac OS X, all the recent figures do seem to confirm that it simply isn't a good idea for Apple.

Apple just posted their intriguing news of hitting one billion app downloads, and all in nine months. Apparently, they're also handing out prizes, but the window of entering for the celebratory winnings is obviously closed. Alas. As a note of interest, one billion in nine months equals out to be about 110 million a month, 27 million a week, and a little less than four million a day.

"Reflecting a strong 2008 in which its sales - if not its stock price - jumped sharply, Apple this week made its first appearance in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 since Steve Jobs' return. Apple became a Fortune 500 company in 1983, but it fell off Fortune magazine's list of America's 500 largest companies (ranked by revenue) in 1995, while Jobs was running NeXT. Apple climbed back onto the list in 2005, eight years after Jobs' return. It vaulted an impressive 32 spots this year to land at No. 71, thanks in part to the declining fortunes of some of the firms that were above it, but mostly to revenues that grew 35.3% to $32.479 billion in 2008."

In a rare case of Apple frankness, the company has allowed a PR person to make a statement to BusinessWeek about the recent Microsoft "Laptop Hunters" ad campaign. Don't read to fast, or you'll miss it: "A PC is no bargain when it doesn't do what you want," Apple spokesman Bill Evans told BusinessWeek, "The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool. With its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price." That's it. Just thought you'd like to know.

After a long period of no updates, Apple has finally updated its often overlooked line of server hardware, the Xserve. The last update was in January 2008, which added the Xeon "Harpertown" processor, and this latest update introduces - as expected - Intel's Nehalem processors, as well as a host of other upgrades and new options.

Geeks.com, home of cheap iPods, sent us in the 4th Gen Apple iPod Nano to take it for a spin. Let's see how it stacks up against the 1st generation Nano that we also happen to have available in our lab, and the iPod Touch.

We all know the stories of old computers or old operating systems still dutifully performing their tedious little tasks - the examples of electronic billboards running Windows 98, or ATMs running os/2 are abundant. A recent example that has been making its rounds across the internet is testament to the sturdiness of the Mac Classic IIs.

Apple held an event today announcing some of the new features coming in iPhone OS v3. Thee were loads and loads of new features, but the big ones are cut/copy/paste functionality, push notifications (I guess most developers will believe it when they finally see it), spotlight search, and many others.

Engadget reports that Apple will be detailing iPhone 0S 3.0 at a March 17 event. Because the event is being billed as an "advance preview," it's unlikely we'll see the new OS for some time, however, across the internet, hopes are high that the new OS will include many of the most commonly requested features, such as cut and paste, MMS, A2DP, Push notifications, and background tasks.

The usually already overactive Apple rumour mill has been spinning like crazy the past few days due to rumours about apple possibly entering the netbook market. The rumours are vague and not exactly definitive, but that doesn't mean mulling a possible apple netbook isn't interesting. If the Cupertino company built a netbook, what would it look like?

Ever since Apple launched the App Store for iPhone owners, the company has seen some serious criticism regarding its willy-nilly admittance policy. Several popular applications were not allowed into the App Store, forcing the developers of those applications to offer their work only to owners of jailbroken iPhones. From now on, that will be a whole lot easier: the first unauthorised iPhone application store is about to open up shop.

Just as everyone suspected, Apple updated its various lines of desktop computers today, bringing speed and performance improvements across the board. Mac Pro, iMac, and the Mac Mini were all upgraded, and especially for the Mini, it was a long time coming. The Mac Pro sees the most changes.

Apple released the Safari 4 Beta today. Features: Tabs on top. "Top Sites" 'Speed Dial' feature. "Smart" address/search fields. HTML5 Canvas. HTML5 Audio/Video (though no Ogg). Acid 3. CSS Animation/Gradients/Masks/Reflection. CSS Web Fonts. New "Nitro" Javascript engine - "Up to 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1". 'Native' look and native font rendering on Windows Vista/XP. I can think of only one thing: "Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!"

Whenever we're talking market share and Macs, it'll inevitably get late. There are different means of measuring market share, and different ways to interpret the resulting data, usually leading to heated debates about who is right and who isn't. Ars decided to take a look at the different methods of measurement and see what they mean.