I’ve written a couple of posts about Apple’s new naming strategy that began with the new MacBook Pro, announced last month. After a lot of speculation about the naming of the desktop lineup it appears that Apple may have settled on “Mac Pro.”
An article at TheStreet.com indicates that Apple filed for a trademark on the phrase “Mac Pro” in New Zealand in late 2005. The November 18th 2005 filing categorizes “Mac Pro” under the following classifications:
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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Apple is having some serious, documented issues with the 15-inch PowerBook G4s that were released in October 2005 (a.k.a “High-Resolution” or “Double-Layer SD”) and it appears that they are ignoring them.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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I think that it’s time to address the elephant in the room: the Apple plasma story that I floated in the run up to Macworld Expo. The story was based on a tip that I received from a source that was reliable in the past and after checking it with a few other industry peers it seemed plausible albeit a little out of the scope of Apple’s traditional products.
After further research with some publishing peers I discovered that others had also been leaked the plasma display story but that it was from someone that they didn’t know. The story was based on some bad intelligence that I received (sound familiar?) and I made the decision to run with it. Perhaps it was a little irrational exuberance on my part or my perennial optimism, but either way, I was sold. While Apple hasn’t released anything in this category, it could easily be an extension to the iMac line. The cottage industry built around Mac mini home theaters further fueled the fire. I also got swept up in the excitment of plasmas shipping with Intel ViiV digital home technology. The timing seemed perfect with Intel having just announced ViiV a few days prior to MWSF.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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Its official. The Walt Disney Company today announced the acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios, the blockbuster animation studio majority owned by Apple’s Steve Jobs, for $7.4 billion.
Jobs will take a seat on the Disney board and Pixar President Ed Catmull will serve as president of the new Pixar and Disney animation studios. Pixar’s creative genius, John Lasseter will serve as chief creative officer of the animation studios, and will report directly to Disney CEO Bob Iger.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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There’s a ton of speculation swirling that Disney is set to announce a buyout of Pixar Animation Studios for somewhere in the range of US$7 Billion. The acquisition would make Steve Jobs the largest individual shareholder of Disney according to a story on AppleXNet.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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In the wake of Macworld Expo come a veritable plethora of Apple rumors. Some interesting fodder for a Friday.
- Disney buys Pixar
- 2G Video iPod
- Wireless iPod
- Bluetooth iPod
- iPod phone
- iPod boombox
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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Mike Davidson has started a really good contest on his blog. It’s quite simple and self-explanatory: Design a Steve Jobs Movie Poster.
Get the link on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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With Apple’s announcement of the MacBook Pro they also obsoleted a popular notebook technology – the PC Card slot (formerly PCMCIA).
ExpressCard/34 is a blazing fast replacement for the venerable PC Card slot found on many notebooks, including several generations of PowerBook. ExpressCard is a serial interface delivering between 480 Mbytes/sec and 2.5 Gbit/sec/direction of bi-directional throughput, depending on the interface (USB 2.0 or PCI Express) while a CardBus PC Card is a parallel interface capable of only 33-132 Mbytes/sec.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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Apple used the Macworld Expo in San Francisco last week to announce a new version of iTunes, version 6.0.2, that “includes stability and performance improvements over iTunes 6.0.1.” One of the “improvements” is the iTunes MiniStore which an interesting little piece of code that looks at what you’re listening to and suggests artists and songs that you might like. The main issue with the iTunes MiniStore is that it arrives turned on by default. Didn’t Apple pay attention to the whole Sony BMG Music rootkit fiasco?
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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One of the most surprising things about the announcement of the the new MacBook Pro at Macworld Expo this week was Apple’s dropping the 8x burning double-layer SuperDrive in favor of an inferior 4x single-layer mechanism.
I was puzzled during his keynote address when Steve Jobs listed the specs of the new MacBook Pro with only a 4x SuperDrive, it was surely an error I thought. Why would Apple ship a 4x SuperDrive in a machine touted as so much faster than current PowerBooks? (The current PowerBook G4 ships with 8x SuperDrives.)
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.

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