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On March 17th, the following items will be officially deemed "vintage" or "obsolete" in Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Japan, Latin America, the United States and retail Apple Stores. After that date, Apple will not provide service parts or documentation for these products and the items cannot be sent in as Mail-In Repairs to AppleCare Repair Centers. Time to hit your parents up for some new tech, boys and girls. Here's the "vintage" list: Xserve RAID Xserve (Slot Load) Xserve (Cluster Node) ...and here's the "obsolete" list: PowerBook G4 Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio) Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver) Macintosh Server G4 (Digital...

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. iLife 09 has recently been released, and among all the excitement about the new release, as well as the hubbub surrounding Steve Jobs' health, it was relatively easy to miss the alterations in the system...

BOUGHT YOURSELF a spanking new IntelliMac Pro yet? Then, quick, get your needles and pins out and get patching.

"The definition of a civilized computing platform: the time requiredto learn how to use it is less than the time required to complete a major simulation on it." - Bill Buzbee, Arctic Region Supercomputing Center The Beginnings It was the summer of 2003, and university staff members in the computer science department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia had just heard Steve Jobs announce the G5 at WWDC. The new Power Mac G5 had a rather masculine, sharp edged enclosure, and it contained not one but two IBM PowerPC 970 processors running at 2 GHz. The Virginia Tech people...

I'll leave a fuller examination of Vista's broken promises for a later date. For now, let's look at the most current builds we do have--build 5308 and 5342--and see where Vista just completely blows it. As with the broken promises, Vista's failures are legion, but I'll just focus on a few examples here and leave the full list for a later time.

XP-running Macs give PCs a run for their money.....You’ll forgive me if I seem a little confused these days. Despite the fact that I work in a lab full of Macs, I spend more of my time lately staring at Windows XP than at Mac OS X. ....SNIP.... As you can see, the Macs running Windows gave these PCs a run for their money, with the 2.16GHz MacBook Pro turning in the fastest scores on three of the five individual tests.

Apple Computer could introduce its first laptop computers based on Intel chips as early as January, which, together with robust sales of video iPods, should drive earnings higher, Citigroup said Wednesday. Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner raised his target on the computer maker's stock price to $71 from $51 and boosted his earnings forecasts for the next two years. For the current quarter, Gardner raised his revenue estimate to $5.5 billion from $4.8 billion and his earnings-per share forecast to 60 cents from 47 cents. He also raised his 2006 revenue forecast to $20.4 billion from $17.6 billion and his earnings...

Along with its transition to Intel processors, Apple Computer in the first half of next year will introduce new eye-catching industrial designs for both of its laptop offerings, AppleInsider has learned. Although the Mac maker has only gone on record in saying that the first Intel-based Macintosh systems are due by the middle of 2006, information passed on by extremely reliable sources indicates that the company is on track to begin introducing its first Intel machines much sooner. With the initiation of the Intel Power Mac project last month, all five of Apple's Intel Macintosh projects are now said to...

Silicon.com provides a speculative but interesting piece of the possibility of Apple (again) licensing the Mac operating system to 3rd party PC manufacturers and brining back Mac Clones. The article also recaps the history of Mac licensing from an early suggestion by Bill Gates for Apple to do so in 1985. Although the Apple management team resisted his advice initially, the seed was planted and the rambling clone licensing saga spanned the tenures of four Apple CEOs. The first faltering steps were taken by John Sculley; Michael Spindler ushered in the first clone agreement and Gil Amelio took the scheme...

September 15, 2005 - Apple's Power Mac G5 line will see an upgrade in the near future, possibly before the close of the month, sources have informed Think Secret. Poor sales of the current models is likely the driving force behind the premature revision, which will come less than six months since Apple last upgraded the line. The April Power Mac G5 revision saw only an incremental boost in performance as the top-end model went from dual-2.5GHz processors to dual-2.7GHz. At the disappointment of many potential customers, Apple continued using the single-core PowerPC 970FX processors in the G5s and not...

If Apple ever decides to let its Mac OS X operating system outside of its confines, the company can count Dell Inc. founder and Chairman Michael Dell as a possible customer. With the recent news that Apple plans to become a fellow customer of Intel Corp. for x86 processors, Dell has expressed interest in selling Mac OS X-based PCs, he said in an e-mail to Fortune published on the magazine’s Web site Thursday. “If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers,” Dell wrote in the e-mail. A Dell...

SAN FRANCISCO - After two decades of touting its Macintosh as a superior alternative to PCs based on Intel Corp. chips and Microsoft Corp. software, Apple Computer Inc. announced plans to switch the Mac to the same Intel chips that have powered Windows-based machines for years.The deal, which has long been rumored, will help Apple better compete with the performance - and potentially the price - of Windows PCs. Still, Apple will continue to build its own computers and says it won't be licensing its software to other PC vendors.Speaking to thousands of software developers Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developers...

Mac OS X has been leading secret double life. Every Mac project build for Intel and PowerPC. Every release of Mac OS X has been built for both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs. For the last 5 years. Mac OS X is cross-platform by design. Apple's demo is on an Intel-based system. Jobs shows all Mac OS X Tiger features are already compatible with Intel-based processors. Not done yet. Will put into the developer hands to help Apple finish it.

Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006 WWDC 2005, SAN FRANCISCO—June 6, 2005—At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple® announced plans to deliver models of its Macintosh® computers using Intel® microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007. Apple previewed a version of its critically acclaimed operating system, Mac OS® X Tiger, running on an Intel-based Mac® to the over 3,800 developers attending CEO Steve Jobs' keynote address. Apple also announced the availability of a Developer Transition Kit, consisting of an Intel-based Mac development system...

Apple has confirmed that it is dropping IBM chips from its Mac computers in favour of those made by Intel. The first Apple computers with the Intel chips onboard will be on the market by this time next year. "We think Intel's technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next 10 years," Steve Jobs, the head of Apple, said. The move is being seen as a big gamble for Apple strategy, and a boost to Intel at the expense of IBM. It ends a decade-long relationship between Apple and IBM, which have recently wrangled over supply...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Apple Computer Inc. said Monday that it will begin using microprocessor chips made by Intel Corp. in its signature Macintosh computers beginning next year, ending a longstanding relationship with International Business Machines Corp. Apple (AAPL: news, chart, profile) made the announcement as Chief Executive Steve Jobs delivered the keynote speech at the company's annual conference for software developers in San Francisco."Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor road map by far," Jobs said in a statement released at the start...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) is expected to announce Monday that it will begin shifting its Macintosh computer line next year to Intel Corp. chips, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Sunday, citing people familiar with the situation.

Excerpt, subscription required - SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple Computer Inc. is expected to announce Monday that it will begin shifting its Macintosh computer line next year to Intel Corp. chips, people familiar with the situation said. The move is a major change in strategy by Apple, a high-profile win for Intel, and a potential blow to International Business Machines Corp. and Freescale Semiconductor Inc., suppliers of the PowerPC chips that Apple has long used in its Macintosh systems. [snip]