Apple Archive

With the economy in decline, many fear that the one company to take the financial blow would be Apple. The company focusses on the higher end of the market (at least in price), and with many people having less and less money to spend, as well as facing insecure financial prospects, people may decide to choose for a cheaper, non-Apple computer. Piper Jaffray, an Apple-friendly analyst firm, has projected that the Cupertino company is about to face a decline in year-over-year Mac sales; for the first time in six years.

The iPhone, Apple's current cash cow and best selling cellular phone in the United States, is a completely closed phone in that only applications from the App Store can be installed on the phone. However, by jailbreaking the iPhone you can install applications from whatever source you want, which might be desirable if an application you want isn't allowed into the App Store by Apple. The Cupertino company has never had an official stance on jailbeaking, but this has now changed: according to them, it's a breach of copyright.

US resident already had the pleasure/disgrace (take your pick) of buying non-Apple computers with Mac OS X pre-installed through PsyStar. European customers were left out in the cold, as PsyStar is a US-based company which undoubtedly makes shipping across the pond rather expensive. Despair no longer, European clone enthusiasts: German PearC is here.

Apple has always been about moving forward, about pressing customers to buy the latest and greatest. Product pacing has been high in Cupertino (except for the Mac Mini, obviously), and this is obviously a good thing if you're an Apple bean counter. Most Apple fans more or less accept this planned obsolescence without question, but the company may have just gone a little too far.

Tom's Hardware reviews Apple's MacBook. "The MacBook offers an excellent design for the money. The unibody construction is second to none, and Apple has done its homework with component selection, choosing best-of-breed technologies such as the Nvidia GeForce 9400M. While the lack of FireWire is disappointing for those who already own external HDDs with IEEE-1394 connections, or own low-latency FireWire external audio boxes for multitrack audio recording, we would rather have seen eSATA as the option for high-speed external storage. Nonetheless, the MacBook offers a robust notebook in Apple's entry-level product category."

This week, 25 years ago, a company aired an advertisement that would cement that company's name into the minds of many. It was an advertisement about individuality versus conformism, about light versus dark, about new versus established. It was the most expensive advertisement of its time, and yet, it didn't even show the product it was trying to sell. After the ad was over, all we knew was that something called "Macintosh" was going to show us how 1984 wouldn't be like 1984.

Apple reported first-quarter earnings significantly higher than analysts had expected coming off a disappointing holiday season for most tech companies, but provided its usual conservative guidance. For the three-month period ended December 27, Apple recorded $10.2 billion in revenue, as compared with $9.6 billion a year ago, and net income of $1.6 billion, as compared with $1.58 billion a year ago. That translates into earnings per share of $1.78, far more than the $1.39 in earnings per share that analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had expected. Expected revenue was $9.75 billion.

If you thought that Apple kept the white MacBook around only temporarily, you thought wrong. The white MacBook remained on Apple's product listing, despite the introduction of the newer and faster unibody MacBooks. The newer MacBooks were more expensive than the white model, so Apple kept it around to serve the budget market. To confirm that the low-end MacBook will be around for a while, the company updated the machine today.

The subject of Apple CEO (and Messiah) Steve Jobs has been in the news quite a bit lately. It's nearly making me sick, the nonstop debate -- not about his health, but rather, about whether or not it's okay to discuss his health in the first place. I'm here to tell you: it's perfectly fine. Long ago, Steve Jobs forfeited his right to any privacy on this matter. Read on and I'll tell you why.

Breaking news out of Cupertino: Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has announced he is taking a medical leave of absence, stepping down as CEO of Apple from now until June 2009. Steve Jobs announced this new turn of events in an email to all Apple employees today. Tim Cook will assume the CEO position for the time being.

While we're on the subject of netbooks today, I ran across a story by Ars Technica's Erica Sadun, who writes for Ars' Infinite Loop (Apple) section. She poses that Apple already sells a netbook: the iPod Touch and the iPhone. I've heard many people make this claim before (including Steve Jobs himself), but I find it very hard to see the iPod Touch and the iPhone as netbooks.

At MacWorld, Apple announced its new iWork.com beta, a Google-Docs-esque online collaboration application to work closely with the original iWork program to share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with others. When beta testing is over, it will be a paid service (though the monthly price as of yet hasn't been released), much unlike Google Docs, which is free.

Apple, which has outpaced the overall personal computer market this year despite its strategy of eschewing discounts, showed its first signs of weakness in November. NPD analyst Steve Baker blamed a 35% drop in sales of desktop Macs, noting growth in Apple's laptops still outpaced rivals . The decline marks a sharp reversal for Apple, which has enjoyed robust demand this year for its Macs, even as spending on Windows-based PCs slowed along with sales of other electronics like flat-panel TVs. Note by Kroc: With apologies to OSNews reader judgen for changing the news source provided from SmartHouse to WSJ.

In a move that will surely revive the tiring rumour that Steve Jobs has serious health issues, Apple has announced that not only will they back out of MacWorld San Francisco , but also that Steve Jobs will not hold his usual keynote address at the coming MacWorld event this January - which will be the last MacWorld attended by Apple. The keynote will instead be delivered by Phil Schiller. Surprising? Hardly.