Yes, I know Steve Jobs often says that this feature or another was added to a Mac or the Mac OS because customers asked for it. I would normally be inclined to agree with him, because Apple does offer ways for you to send your feedback on their products, and certainly the return of some features to Mac OS X can be attributed to requests. Take Labels for example, although it doesn’t work quite the same as it did with Mac OS 9.

On the other hand, sometimes you have to wonder whether such claims are just marketing spin. Take the new iMac, with the glossy screens. Now is Apple correct that most of you wanted it that way? Or did they get a really great price on glossy LCD panels and hoped to keep production costs down as much as possible?

Or did they just misjudge your reaction to such things?

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

• The Mac OS Clone Myth Revisited
• The Snow Leopard Report: Recovering from Feature-Bloat
• Newsletter #458 Preview: Twenty-Four Years Using Macs
• Newsletter #430 Preview: Apple and Microsoft: Where’s the Trust?
• Newsletter #429 Preview: The Mac Is On Top Again!

There are troubling signals in the wind about the possible fates of the 17-inch iMac and the Mac mini. None of this has been confirmed, of course, but when it seems that a product is not getting much promotion, you have to wonder whether it’s destined for the closeout rack.

When it comes to the mini, I suppose its obituary has been written and rewritten for a while now. You don’t hear much about it, and it’s been a while since the product line was updated. Even the recent speed bump for the MacBook, with which it shares many internals, didn’t migrate to the Mac mini.

Now it may just be that Apple has lost interest in building products below the magic thousand dollar plateau, simply because sales are tepid. More profits are to be made with more expensive gear, and it’s certainly true that Apple’s sales growth is exceeding that of the PC market as a whole. Here in the U.S., for example, Apple’s notebook share is now over 14% in the retail chain, even though the cheapest MacBook is $1,099.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

• The Apple Hardware Report: Aren’t You Ready for a New Mac Yet?
• Can We Just Stop Talking About Steve Jobs?
• Another Cheap Apple Product Rumor
• The Illusion of the Cheap Mac
• The Apple Hardware Report: Make it Better, Not Cheaper!

For a long, long time now, you’ve been told that Apple designs the best user interfaces. They “just work,” and the learning curve — such as it is — is relatively short. Of course, that doesn’t explain the consistent sales of “Dummies” books about various and sundry Apple products through the years, but compared to other personal computing platforms, Apple is far and away the best.

But it’s not perfect, and every so often, I want to change the things that come out of left field to irritate me and others. I realize that you may not find what I have to say inspires such feelings, but that’s why we offer a Comments panel here, so you can chime in with your own annoyances.

It’s also possible that some of these problems can be resolved, and I’ll start with one, since the matter managed to upset one of my clients until I revealed the solution. You see the client in question, Jack, is a long-time Mac user and a senior citizen who demonstrates that the age of 82 is the new 60. He’s bright, active, and there’s very little in his demeanor to show his age, except for an occasional slight shaking of his hands.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

• Newsletter #475 Preview: How Apple Might Avoid a 2009 Screwup
• Is Mac OS Classic Nostalgia a Bad Thing?
• A Warning to Apple Computer: First Impressions Count
• Can We Survive Without Mac Rumor Sites?
• Complicated User Interfaces #2: What About Consistency?

All right, I’ll confess. I’ve not used a the new, large-screen iMac, I haven’t even touched one, but I have a pretty good idea of the user experience, since I’ve worked on 23-inch and 24-inch LCD displays for several years. Since it’s a tad larger than the former, you can expect text to be a little more readable, especially in small sizes. It will also be supremely fast, as one expects of any computer equipped with Intel’s new Core 2 Duo chip.

The specs are pretty spot-on for the power user who doesn’t need lots of space inside for extra hard drives, a spare optical drive, four processors and all the rest. There’s even a FireWire 800 port, a critical extra if you need a speedy external drive for backups and perhaps video rendering. In fact, even gaming results appear to be decent according to Apple’s own benchmarks, although I suspect the dedicated gamers in our audience will want something better. On the other hand, some of you don’t believe Apple when it tells you how fast its computers run, so maybe you should just wait for the independent reviewers to have their say about performance.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

• The Great Hardware Pitch: The Midrange Tower Revisited
• The Apple Product Announcement Waiting Game
• Apple and the Great Time Capsule Conspiracy
• Does Apple Really Listen to You?
• The One Paragraph MacBook Pro Update Report