There has been plenty of speculation as to when Apple will upgrade MacBooks and MacBook Pros from the Intel Core Duo (code-named “Yonah”) chips to the faster and cooler Merom (a.k.a. Core 2 Duo) processors.
Initially I heard that Merom was on tap to land in MacBook Pros in time for the holidays – late October or early November. Then last week, DigiTimes reported that the new chip was imminent and that it was expected to turn up in MacBook Pros and MacBooks in September.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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How will software pricing affect sales of Apple’s upcoming Leopard and Microsoft’s Vista? Here’s a historical comparison of professional desktop operating systems from both, leading up to a future outlook for how Microsoft’s significantly more expensive platform will affect new computer sales in 2007.
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Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted Magazine

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Samsung have announced that it has developed the industry’s first 1.98” LCD panel to achieve 640 x 480 pixels (VGA resolution).
This means that camera and mobile phone-size screens will be able to display images at 300 dots-per-inch, three times that of most LCD displays, and ten times that of many plasma screens. The practical outcome of this is that text will remain legible at smaller sizes, and more data can be viewed without ‘panning and scanning’.
I’m looking forward to the time when PDAs (and laptops) come with screens with this (and greater) resolution. The primary benefit will be that text can be displayed at qualites that approach those of the printed page.
(Contributed by: Brett Jordan)

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CNet’s Tom Krazit reports that Apple Computer has been chosen as having the best customer satisfaction “among computer individual vendors” in a new study. Apple earned a score of 83 – a 2.5 percent improvement over last year. Dell improved on its 2005 score by 5.4 percent to garner a 78.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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Boot Camp 1.1 beta contains many updates and is intended for all new and previous Boot Camp beta users.

Boot Camp 1.1 beta includes:

• Support for the latest Intel-based Macintosh computers
• Easier partitioning using presets for popular sizes
• Ability to install Windows XP on any internal disk
• ISight camera support
• Support for built-in microphones
• Right-click when pressing the right-hand Apple key on Apple keyboards
• Improved Apple keyboard support including Delete, PrintScreen, NumLock, and ScrollLock keys

Apple – Boot Camp

technorati tags:BootCamp

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I haven’t experienced any problems with the SuperDrive in my MacBook Pro, but others have:

A surprisingly high number of readers have responded to our initial coverage of an issue where the SuperDrives in both MacBooks and MacBook Pros fail — generally with an inability to mount or read data from otherwise viable media… in most cases, the problem affects CDs, but issues with DVDs have also been reported. The problematic discs mount properly and can be read from other Macs, but fail the same processes when inserted into some MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

MacFixIt – MacBook and MacBook Pro SuperDrive failure (#2): Battery-related?; Try PMU reset; more

technorati tags:MacBook, MacBookPro, SuperDrive

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If any PowerPage readers from the Garden State want to get together for a Grand Opening party – get in touch!

Apple has officially announced the grand opening of The Pier at Caesars (Atlantic City, NJ) store for August 19th at 11 a.m. No doubt because of the store’s location, it will be open unusual hours: 11 a.m. to midnight every day. The grand opening will feature the usual sweepstakes (Digital Lifestyle Collection valued at $2,229) and 1,000 commemorative T-shirts.

ifoAppleStore – News and information about Apple Computer’s retail stores

For nearly a year, Béhar has been at work on the most visible and most controversial project of his career. His client, a nonprofit offshoot of the MIT Media Lab, had dreamed up a radical new computer. Depending on who you asked, it was either soon-to-be-legendary vaporware or a shortcut to modern education for tens of millions of poor kids around the world. The plan called for a garage full of experimental technology: radio antennas that network computers up to 10 miles apart without satellites or towers; a dual-mode display that switches to monochrome in bright light; a power scheme that lets the computer run indefinitely without an electrical outlet. But nothing worked together. Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte was looking for someone to puzzle together the technology – someone to make it bright and iconic, rainproof, dustproof, heatproof, drop-proof, spillproof, and intuitive to a Thai or Nigerian child who had never seen modern technology. Negroponte would offer the laptop to governments who would commit to buying at least a million computers each; it promised to outsell every other laptop in the world in just a few years. Oh, and one more thing: The machine would need to cost one-fifth the price of the cheapest laptop at Wal-Mart. The Media Lab dubbed the project One Laptop per Child, but everyone else knew it simply as “the $100 laptop.”

Wired 14.08: The Laptop Crusade

technorati tags:$100, Laptop, Notebook

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It appears that notebook computer batteries are the latest focus of airline safety regulators after a series or high profile explosions, fires and recalls in recent months. Could the airlines ban all electronics from commercial flights? It’s unlikely as business travelers (the most lucrative category for the troubled airlines) would surely revolt. A WSJ article (sub. req’d) goes into the details and why you may want to skip the after market batteries:

Although the risk is small, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has documented 339 cases of lithium and lithium-ion batteries for portable electronics overheating, emitting smoke and fumes or exploding since 2003. There is no record of a serious injury or death, but the Federal Aviation Administration has logged 60 incidents since 1991. In the past two years, six incidents have occurred on aircraft, including five fires and an overheated flashlight that had to be handled with oven mitts.

In February, a United Parcel Service Inc. plane full of packages — including lithium-ion batteries — was engulfed in flames while landing in Philadelphia. Investigators haven’t reached a final ruling on the cause but continue to closely examine the melted shipment of batteries. In October 2004, a plane carrying Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards made an emergency landing after a lithium-ion battery exploded in the hand of a television newsman.

Worries about the possible dangers are serious enough that the National Transportation Safety Board held a two-day hearing in July in Washington to discuss the safety of lithium-ion batteries on passenger and cargo planes and the investigation into the UPS fire. No formal proposal for new regulations has yet been put forward, but regulators are discussing options ranging from tightening manufacturing guidelines for the batteries to potentially restricting their use on

WSJ.com – Laptop Dangers Draw Scrutiny From Airline-Safety Regulators

technorati tags:Notebook, Battery, Safety, Airlines

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The world’s largest personal computer maker, Dell Inc., announced yesterday that it would recall 4.1 million notebook computer batteries with cells made by Sony Corp., the largest recall in Dell’s history. MacFixIt has inferred that the recalled Dell batteries could be the same Sony batteries used by Apple.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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