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The Council of Better Business Bureaus has recommended that Apple Computer discontinue comparative performance claims regarding its Power Mac G5 desktop. Acting on a tip from Apple rival Dell, the council's National Advertising Division (NAD) "determined that the evidence provided by Apple did not provide a reasonable basis for its broad unqualified claims that its Power Mac G5 is 'the world's fastest, most powerful personal computer' and that it 'edged out the competition on integer.'"

Apple energizes digital lifestyle Updated iLife allows computer owners variety to play with By Matthew Fordahl, Associated Press A lot of high-tech companies strive to be the hub of a digital lifestyle, but unless they're pushing an expensive Media Center PC they mostly leave it to consumers to figure out how to make their products work with others. Macintosh computer owners don't face that headache. Apple Computer Inc.'s updated iLife '04 suite of five programs lets you organize photos, play and buy songs, edit movies, burn DVDs and, now, create music. The programs all work well together and the suite...

I think I've finally had it with Windows and Fujitsu . Now that we are finally getting high speed internet access here , I am seriously thinking about purchasing an Apple iBook G4 which will be used primarily for internet , email , homepage making , and downloading music . I'd be interested in hearing any and all opinions about this machine . Thanks in advance .

by David Coursey Executive Editor, AnchorDesk Monday, Feb. 23, 2004 In my computing life, there's one constant: The Macs don't crash and the Windows machines do. I mention this because on Thursday I went to see my friend Rob (Enderle, the noted industry analyst) and took along my Fujitsu Tablet PC. I used it at Rob's house to take notes of our meeting. THAT WENT well enough, but when I got home the machine had slowed to a crawl--and there it's stayed. Now XP is never a speed demon at boot time, but ten minutes to boot is ridiculous even by...

Apple's Mac OS X has been declared one of the world's safest operating systems by London-based security experts, mi2g. The security firm's Intelligence Unit has run a comparitive study of the variety of operating systems available today. It states: "The world's safest and most secure online server Operating System (OS) is proving to be the Open Source family of BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) and Mac OS X based on Darwin." It's also claimed that Linux has become the most breached online server OS in the government and non-government spheres for the first time, while the number of successful hacker...

Conventional wisdom paints the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Macintosh as a "soft" machine. Elementary schools might use it, and those in creative fields might use it, but those who want to do hard-core computation choose workstations running Windows, Unix or Linux, right? Not necessarily. "If you pull up a shot of NASA after the [first] Mars landing and look at the desktops, you'll see a couple of PC laptops there, but you'll see more PowerBooks," Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president for hardware engineering at Apple, told the E-Commerce Times. Although no hard figures are available to chart the Mac's rise in...

Howard Dean campaign to use Apple "Switch" ad format in Wisconsin primary Monday, February 09, 2004 - 09:08 AM EST The Howard Dean campaign is asking visitors to the Howard Dean website to vote for their favorite of three ads that are based upon the format of Apple's old "Switch" television ads. The ads were independently created, directed, and produced by grassroots Dean supporters. The ads can be viewed online with QuickTime, RealPlayer, or Windows Media here.

NEW YORK, Feb 5 (Reuters) - America Online on Thursday said it will let users of its instant messenger service communicate over a live video connection for the first time, months after federal regulators lifted limitations on the company. AOL, the world's largest online service and owned by Time Warner Inc. , also said it will link its live video chat service to Apple Computer Inc.'s iChat service. The deal expands a May 2002 relationship between the two companies that linked their respective messaging services. More than 35 million active users per month send on average 1.5 billion messages...

For Scott Stowell of New York City, it was the freedom to express a passion."I think the message we tried to deliver is something we really believed in. We were passionate in our beliefs and everyone has a right in our democracy to do that."Mr. Stowell was part of a team that produced one of 26 political commercials in a recent online contest soliciting political ads critical of President Bush. Entitled the 'Bush in 30 seconds' TV ad contest and sponsored by the Washington, DC-based public policy advocacy group MoveOn.org, Stowell's spot - entitled "Pop Quiz" - was produced and...

Two words come immediately to mind to describe Apple's Xserve G5: power and choice. The Xserve G5 is a rack-mounted server product designed to work with Mac OS X Server to create a powerful and highly configurable server. And like the original Xserve, the new Xserve G5 continues to illustrate Apple's commitment to a high-performance server platform -- something that until recently was lacking in Apple's product scheme. The Xserve G5 isn't a product that most mainstream Mac users will find interesting (except for perhaps diehard Mac fans). But it is a product that should appeal to system and network...

Apple To Build A Second Supercomputer At Virginia Tech ROANOKE, Va. (AP)--After building one of the world's fastest supercomputers on its first try, Apple Computer Inc. is again teaming with Virginia Tech to make another high performance machine using its new 64-bit Xserve G5 computer. Xserve, a thinner, more compact machine designed for clustering with other computers, will replace the supercomputer Tech built in November using off-the-shelf G5 PowerMacs. Tech project leader Srinidhi Varadarajan said the university will upgrade from PowerMacs to Xserves in April or May. Tech is still negotiating the price with Apple, though Varadarajan said Monday any...

Apple embracing Big Brother; Revolution wanes 20 years after famous '1984' ad By Bob Keefe Cox News Service Saturday, January 24, 2004 It was billed as the start of a revolution. And it was. Twenty years ago this month, with the shadowy "1984" Super Bowl commercial that would become advertising legend, Apple Computer Inc. introduced the world to Macintosh. Marketed as "a computer for the rest of us," Macintosh promised to change forever the IBM Corp.-dominated world of computing that was just starting to take shape. And undoubtedly, the stylish machine did change computing for everyone who now uses...

Apple Computer beat Wall Street's earnings expectations for the December quarter by 2 cents and reported its best sales in four years, the computer maker reported after the close on Wednesday For the fiscal first quarter of 2004, the Cupertino, Calif. company earned a net profit of $63 million, or 17 cents a share, compared to a loss of $8 million, or 2 cents a share, a year ago. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call were expecting a profit of 15 cents. Sales jumped 36% year over to $2.006 billion, a bit better than the $1.932 billion expected by...

...with its upgraded server and RAID systems as well as new clustering and grid technologies. What's stunning isn't that Apple Computer Inc.'s engineers can, say, design a server with two 2-GHz G5 processors, 1GB of memory, storage capacity of 80 to 750GB and loads of other goodies all in a slim 1U package (a mere 1.75-in. thick). No, what's stunning is that Apple's marketers will price the Xserve system at $3,999. That makes the long-reputed price-gouging Macintosh maker the price leader for dual-CPU servers by a couple of bucks. But when you add in Windows per-client pricing, the savings become...

Like many of the Macintosh faithful, I watched Steve Jobs' keynote speech at MacWorld last week with anticipation, and I wasn't disappointed. The announcements about the new G5 Xserve and the beefed up Xserve RAID were just what I had been hoping for in the data center (see story). And if those new iPod Minis were just $50 cheaper, I'd have bought two by now. However, the most underplayed news, and yet the most interesting thing to emerge from the show in my view, was Apple's new Xgrid application. This software is aimed at scientific applications like gene sequencing, missile...

NEW YORK - When noted biologist David Botstein was lured from Stanford University to head the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton, he had his choice of computing systems. But Botstein says he outfitted the center almost soup to nuts with Apple computers and servers, which are used for everything from desktop applications to comparing lengths of genetic code. By eschewing the more expensive workstations that high-tech biologists have come to rely on, he says he has also cut down on the cost of maintaining his number-crunching machines. Botstein's not alone. Apple Computer and its Macintosh, which has long...

With the 20th anniversary this month of the original Macintosh approaching, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs told MacWorld Expo attendees in San Francisco on Tuesday that 2004 would be a "great Mac year." "Microsoft's copying us again--it feels great," said Jobs, who said 9.3 million Apple users--about 40% of the company's installed base--have upgraded to Mac OS X, the company's 3-year-old operating system. But Jobs didn't introduce any new desktops or laptops during his annual keynote address. Instead, he demonstrated a collection of new software designed to drive sales of Macs running OS X, and unveiled a lower-priced version...

Personal computers were invented in the early 1970s, but the computer as we know it today — a vehicle of creativity, communication and entertainment — began on January 24, 1984. In a college lecture hall in Cupertino, California, a young, fresh-faced Apple executive called Steven P. Jobs introduced a gathering of Apple's shareholders to a quirky little beige box called the Macintosh. The fruit of $80 million and several years' research, the Mac was the antithesis of most computers of its era. Designed for ordinary people, not programmers, it dispensed with blinking cursors and inscrutable instructions for a child-friendly interface...

Cupertino’s 64-bit desktop system and Panther OS mix beauty and exceptional performance Companies large and small routinely set their expectations of computer systems according the capabilities of Intel-based x86 computers and 32-bit Windows. We’re due for a shift in standards. Enter Apple, which got the bright idea of taking a pair of 64-bit IBM PowerPC CPUs, jacking them into server-class internal buses, and squeezing the whole thing into a desk-side tower chassis. The result, the Power Mac G5, delivers on the present need for rapid computing, deep multitasking, and responsive user interfaces — as well as the future need (current...

iPod - therefore I am It was the must-have Christmas gift of 2003: a gadget that stores your favourite 10,000 tunes and looks incredibly cool, too. So why do people become such bores when they get one? Stephen Moss on the invasion of the Poddies Friday January 2, 2004 The Guardian The iPodlounge website has 1,741 pictures of iPods, submitted by iPod-lovers all around the world. An iPod flying over the Swiss Alps; an iPod on the roof of the Australian parliament building in Canberra; a dog listening to an iPod in New Jersey; a man running the Washington marathon...