It seems that Apple has agreed to pay between $25 to $79 for bad power adapters that came with some laptop units between 2003 to 2007. Details of the refund will not be fully known until the final court settlement hearing scheduled for September 8, 2008. According to the story in the LA times:

Customers who bought certain replacement adapters for PowerBook and iBook computers are eligible for the settlement, according to documents filed in federal court in San Jose. U.S. District Court Judge James Ware granted preliminary approval of the agreement March 24.

The class-action suit, filed in 2006, alleged that Apple misrepresented problems with the power adapters. In 2001, Apple recalled about 570,000 adapters sold with PowerBooks after reports of overheating. Apple advised customers to stop using the adapters and offered free replacements.

The adapter “dangerously frays, sparks and prematurely fails to work,” the plaintiffs said in court filings.

Hopefully more details will be available when the settlement is concluded. Apple users should be notified by mail of the settlement.

Comments welcome.

LA Times article is here.

Tags: apple, power, adapters, frayed, cords, replacement, settlement

A California legislator from southern California by the name of Charles Calderon wants to tax iTunes. His thinking is that this would be a great way to pay off the $8 billion dollars in over spending the state is facing. Oh wait. It’s not over spending. It is called a ’shortfall’. Assemblyman Charles Calderon, D-City of Industry, has meet with strong opposition to his proposal.

In a Silconvalley.com article it states:

“The notion of taxing tangible, physical property is really an industrial-era construct when we made widgets and sold widgets,” Calderon said Friday. “Now it’s not about widgets, it’s about information, and selling information and moving information.”  The Board of Equalization believes state and local revenues would increase by about $114 million a year, but Calderon’s estimate, which he said includes pornography downloads, is about $500 million.

His bill, AB 1956, comes as Apple reports that its iTunes store has leap-frogged over Wal-Mart to become the top music retailer in the United States with more than 4 billion downloads sold.

This is a good way to run technology businesses out of the state of California. Hopefully the voters will see through this ill formed plan.

What do you think? Should we tax iTunes and online pornography? Should all sales on the Internet be taxed as well?

Comments welcome.

Full story is here.

Tags: california, lawmaker, itunes, calderon, taxes, pornography, debt, 4 billion downloads,  

During the past year many PC users have either switched or have considered switching over to a Mac system. One of the questions that comes up is how hard is the learning curve going to be? Fortunately Apple has a great site that takes some of the pain on making the switch. Called Switch 101 the site states:

Welcome to the Mac family! If you’re a PC user who has just switched to the Mac and want to find out how to adapt your old working habits to the Mac OS, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to Switch 101: The former PC user’s guide to getting the most out of your Mac.

Whether you want to learn how to get around and access everything on your Mac; find out how to move your old PC files to the Mac OS environment; figure out how to connect your printer, iPod, digital camera, or other device; learn how to do those tasks you did on a PC on a Mac; learn how to use the software that came with your Mac; or even find out what to do when things don’t go as planned; we have the answers.

There is also assistance on how to migrate your important files, setup hardware and much more.

Apple Switch 101 site is here.

Over at Lifehacker they have a guide called Hack Attack which has very in depth articles to also assist those in making the change.

Lifehacker can be found here.

If you know of any sites that may also be helpful, please post them in the comments section.

Comments welcome.

I remember about 5 years ago having a conversation with a friend of mine, a die hard Mac user, who would chastise me and my PC usage. His opinion was that a Mac could do no wrong and therefore neither could a Mac user. So one evening I took a trip on the Internet to a Mac user group located in Berkeley, California. Surprise, surprise! Those Mac Heads were having just as many issues with their boxes as we PC users were having. Armed with this ammunition I confronted my friend and enlightened him to my new found knowledge and asked why he never mentioned these Mac misgivings? His answer ” you never asked.” Priceless.

In my journeys I found this article over at the Houston Chronicle from Dr. Mac telling the masses the following about why you gotta have more RAM in your Mac to improve performance:

The bottom line is that the more programs and documents you have open, the less free RAM you have available. The less free RAM you have, the slower your Mac will run.

And if your hard disk is almost full, the problem is exacerbated.

• Next week: What to do if your Mac has too little RAM and/or free disk space.

Gee. I bet next week the advice will be if you have too little Ram, add some more.

My point. The PC and Mac hardware are closer relatives than people would have us believe.

Comments welcome.

Full Dr. Mac article is here.

Tags: apple, mac, dr. mac, ram, performance, pc, same, problems,  

Apple continues its focus on customer service and has introduced a tutorial service in which customers can receive one on one training from a Apple guru. Dubbed Creatives by Apple, these teachers can handle any information from iPod usage to creating home videos.

Stepping into an Apple Store is a cross between attending a seminar led by graduate students and hanging out at Starbucks. In addition to the tech tutors, there are staff manning the “Genius Bar,” Apple’s help-desk-by-appointment that provides assistance when things get stuck.

You can also book an hour with a shopping assistant to help pick out the right machine. But if you just want to hang out and listen to music on iPods, or check e-mail on the spotless new MacBook laptops and iMac desktops on display, no one will bother you.

“It’s really becoming the Nordstrom of technology,” said

Cost of the new service is $99 per year which provides one hour a week of personalized service. Apple continues to provide services that keep their client base loyal to Apple, something that other PC manufactures may wish to emulate.

Comments welcome.

Full story is here.

Tags: apple, services, stores, computer, tutorials, guru, help, ipod, movie making,  

Amazon is having a rebate sale on some of Apple’s laptop computer systems. But you have to hurry since the sale ends on March 11th, 2008. Even the new Mac Air has a small rebate of $50! Here are some of the sale items:

Apple MacBook Pro MA895LL/A 15.4″ Laptop (2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD SuperDrive) Save $150 after rebate. Priced at $1,536.49.

Apple MacBook MB061LL/B 13.3″ Laptop (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, Combo Drive) White. Save $75,00 after rebate. Priced at $919.99.

Apple MacBook Air MB003LL/A 13.3″ Laptop (1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive) Save $5 plus another $50.00 after rebate. Priced at $1,744.00.

See a listing of all Apple systems on sale here.

Comments welcome.

Tags: apple, mac, laptops, sale, rebate, amazon,  

The Lenovo ThinkPad X300 is one of the first full size laptops to go up against the thin of the thin, Mac Air. Though the X300 isn’t as thin, it does offer some hardware features that the Mac Air can’t handle because of its thinness. But the X300 still fits inside a standard interoffice envelope and weighs in at just 2.9 lbs when using the 3 cell battery.

What Lenovo has chosen to add to its version of thin might just be more to the liking of businesses and consumers alike. First off is a built-in DVD player/burner. So watching a full length movie during one of those long plane flights is still a viable option. Also the X300 offers three USB ports vs. the Air’s lonely one port.

But the biggest benefit is going to be the user-replaceable battery. The Air doesn’t have this feature, which prohibits users from carrying extra batteries for extended use. This one feature alone is going to make the X300 more attractive in the long run.

Now that Lenovo has released its latest thin laptop, we should expect others to follow relatively soon. These units are expensive compared to standard units so it’s all going to come down to how much you wish to drain your bank account.

Though no complete reviews have been written as of yet, the Crave site has some pictures of the offering from Lenovo here.

Comments welcome.

Like the Apple iPhone, the MacBook Air has a battery that can’t be changed by the user. You need to either send your MacBook Air back to Apple or take the laptop to an Apple store. What I don’t understand is why Apple is producing products in which the battery cannot be changed by the user?

Using electronic devices of any type, we have all run into the problem of having a unit go dead on us while we are using it. Some of us carry additional batteries to extend the life of using the unit when it is not practical to recharge the unit, like at an airport, on an airplane, or other location. It seems somewhat impractical that Apple has chosen not to allow users this luxury.

Which makes one wonder. Is the purpose of what Apple is doing to make its batteries proprietary so that users must use genuine Apple parts only?

What do you think? Does the lack of a user replaceable battery limit Apple units and their functionality?

Comments are welcome.

Rumors have it that because of the reduction of flash memory pricing, Apple may be looking at a reduction in their pricing for iPhones. The price could drop as much as $100 in the next three months or so. Over at phonemag they seem to feel that either people should wait for the price reduction or wait for the newer 3G phone that is coming. In the article it states:

Ouch, I have the feeling this is going to really wind up the commentors.  Rumors are circulating that Apple plan on lowering the price of iPhone and iPod Touch models by $100 at some point in the near future - it varies between “by the end of February” and “by mid-April” - while simultaneously hitting delete on the 8GB versions of both devices.  The move would put a 16GB iPhone at $399 while a 16GB and 32GB iPod Touch would be $299 and $399 respectively.

Forbes is suggesting that prospective iPhone buyers hold off until the much-speculated 3G iPhone, about which the consensus appears to be that it will launch in then next three months.  That might seem like a long time if you have cash burning a hole in your pocket, but it’s nothing compared to the tedium of getting locked into a two-year contract with a far slower device.

So if you are thinking about making an iPhone purchase, you may wish to wait awhile to see if prices actually fall. Also you may wish to consider the newer model as well.

Comments welcome.

Full article is here.

Tags: apple, iphone, pricing, lower, new, model, wait,  

Google is starting to see more and more benefits in its decision to support the iPhone since Apple introduced the device. It seems that Google is now seeing a tremendous amount of searches being made on the Internet by iPhone users, which is turning into additional revenue for the company. In fact the search giant is reporting that they receive about 50 times the number of requests for searches by iPhone users than by other devices. Over at the AppleInsider it is being reported that:

Google on Wednesday said it has seen 50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset — a revelation so astonishing that the company originally suspected it had made an error culling its own data.

 “We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,” Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations told the Financial Times during this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Should other companies follow in Apple’s footsteps by making web access commonplace on their mobile handsets, Gundotra believes the number of mobile searches could outpace fixed internet search “within the next several years.”

That of course means big increases in incremental advertising revenues for the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant. Though Google’s primary revenue driver remains online advertising, the company has never separated out its mobile revenues from those of traditional computer-based browsers.

Gundotra, however, told the Times that the mobile segment was growing “above expectations”, both in terms of usage and revenues.

Now that Google has announced that their own phone is waiting in the wings, it should be interesting to see how much more revenue Google will make once their phone hits the street. It does seems that Google is doing everything right at this monment in time. It may be hard for anyone or any company to catch up. That includes even some of the biggest players.

What do you thin?

Comments are welcome.
Complete article is here.

Tags: google, apple, iphone, searches, internet, phone, 50 times more