Apple’s Macintosh computer sales continue to grow everyday but it has been seen that there is a slight decrease in the rate of growth and the reason has nothing to do with the Mac itself, but is attributed to the fact that Apple has done nothing to refresh the Macs product line. With the updates of iPhone and iPod behind them, now everyone is focusing their attention on the MacBook and the MacBook Pro and they find it surprising that Apple took so long to update its notebook line, as these are the products that matter the most to Apple’s bottom line.

Apple understands what people need and is trying to keep everyone happy again by bringing out the much-awaited and long-overdue revamped notebooks. The release was earlier expected to be towards the end of September, but that seems to have changed. According to sources, it could very well be an October 14, 2008 release. However, some say that we may have to wait until November. We will just have to wait and hope it is sooner than later.

The three legs of Apple as referred by Steve Jobs are the Mac, iPod and iPhone. Well, there are high expectations from the Mac leg. (more…)

The invitations for Apple’s major music-related “Let’s Rock” event held on September 9, 2008 were sent out to the media and others, inviting them to the Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts in San Francisco.

Now with the heavily attended event behind us, the overall takeaway from Let’s Rock is that iPod is back on track. In spite of there being nothing exceptional, the incremental improvements were significant. Through this event, Apple shared a whole year’s worth of progress.

The iPhone has dominated every discussion about Apple the past few days. But at this event, one thing that figured prominently was the iPod product line and iTunes. The timing could not have been better and launching in September gives Apple a lot of time to look at the marketing and distribution ahead of the holiday season shopping.

At this event, Steve Jobs unveiled the sleekly designed iPod nano with a host of new features, an upgraded and cheaper iPod Touch and the new version of iTunes. He expressed his happiness at Apple’s growing dominance in the digital music market.

Upon his entrance, Steve Jobs talked about iTunes. He explained the new features of iTunes 8.0, which are the new “Genius” recommendation engine, a totally changed grid view, a visualizer and better accessibility on Windows and Mac OS X. The iTunes now offers 8.5 million songs, 125000 podcasts, more than 30000 TV shows, 2600 movies and over 3000 apps for iPhone and touch.

The Genius feature allows you to create playlists from songs in your existing library. It also scales to TV shows, podcasts and movies. This is done by selecting any one song and pressing the Genius button, which in turn creates about a 25 to 100 song playlist based on songs you have in your library, which will go well with the song you selected. (more…)

Ubuntu, which has been rated as one of the most popular operating systems, is a free and open source Linux-based operating system that is built around the Linux kernel. It comes with some good open source software applications that you can work on.

The name “Ubuntu” comes from Zulu and Xhosa languages and the principle of Ubuntu is said to be, “a person is a person only through other people.” This can be better explained through the following quote:

“A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Ubuntu is not only free of charge but people are also allowed to improve upon it anyway they wish to, which means they can change and fix the software in any way. This proves to be advantageous when developing programs. Users have no restriction on the number of systems they use it on and the installation is extremely simple.

Ubuntu, sponsored by Canonical a European-based company owned by Mark Shuttleworth, does not cost anything and is free software that does not carry any software licensing charges. In fact, the operating system CDs will be shipped free throughout the world. By making it totally free and open, the company has been able to leverage the knowledge of other developers instead of doing all the development in the company. Canonical is said to make money in spite of giving the software for free, from its engineering services and commercial support contracts, which it offers globally to the wide range of customers, from government organizations to Fortune 500 companies and from schools to research institutes. This paid support makes it possible for the company to earn revenues. (more…)