Dell announced Monday, that it is recalling an estimated 4.1 million laptop batteries due to concerns they could burst into flames when overheated. Maybe no Dell laptop should be allowed on a plane! You need a fire extinguisher DUDE!

I am kidding of course, but it does appear that laptop computer batteries are the latest focus of airline safety regulators after a series or high profile explosions, fires and recalls in recent months. Worries are serious enough that the National Transportation Safety Board held a two-day hearing in July in Washington to discuss the safety of lithium-ion batteries on passenger and cargo planes. The 4.1 million batteries Dell is recalling may constitute the largest safety recall in consumer electronics history.

Dell arranged the recall in cooperation with the US Consumer Product Safety Division, which reported logging six “incidents” involving batteries made for Dell by Sony Corp. Although, no one was reported hurt, the scary pictures and videos of the Dell laptops exploding have turned up on several websites. It al least two of the incidents buildings had to be evacuated due to the intense burning Dell laptop.
Continue reading Dell Recalls 4.1 Million Laptop Batteries…

The US iTunes Music Store now has a Free Downloads Page (iTunes link, will launch iTunes), where you can easily find all of the free videos Apple has currently available for download.

The Intel Mac has a certified “hit” with Parallels virtualization software that allows Mac users to run any version of Windows (3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, Me, 2000, NT, XP, 2003), any Linux distribution, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2, eComStation, or MS-DOS. This allows Mac users to run Windows applications right alongside their native OS X apps without rebooting their machine.

GigaOM reports Parallels has sold nearly 100,000 copies with a suggested retail price of $79.95, the company may have earned close to $8 million. Speculating that Parallels availability via the Apple Store has helped spur sales. Parallels is also available on Amazon for a discounted $71.99. It makes you wonder why Microsoft has “left the building” by not porting Virtual PC to Intel Macs. Microsoft owned this market for sometime and with their intimate knowledge of Windows surely had a technical advantage. Microsoft as long disliked any “real” competition and with VWware and others coming into this lucrative market, they “bailed” out.
Continue reading Parallels Reports 8 Million in Sales…

Continue reading OS X Tip #116: Using Web Clipping Tool in Tiger…

Continue reading OS X Tip #115: Take A Screenshot of Dashboard Widget…

The Apple Design Awards is an annual contest, sponsored by Apple, to recognize technical excellence and outstanding achievement on Mac OS X. Winning developers receive valuable prizes, and their winning entries are showcased at WWDC 2006, Macworld 2007, and on the Apple website.

This year’s Apple Design Awards features our best prize packages ever. Each category winner will receive two 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop computers, two Apple 23-inch Cinema Displays, an ADC Premier Membership, a WWDC 2006 E-ticket, and an exhibitor space at Macworld 2007. The Student category winner will receive one 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop computer, one Apple 23-inch Cinema Display, one 60GB iPod, an ADC Student Membership, and a WWDC 2006 Student E-ticket.
Continue reading WWDC: Apple Design Awards Winners…

In a move that should not surprise anyone, Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit indicated that it will not develop a new version of Virtual PC. This announcement was made at the WWDC where VMware, is previewing its move into the Mac virtualization space. Seems Microsoft’s buying of Connectix a few years ago actually did spell the end to Virtual PC as some predicted. Microsoft was very slow to update Virtual PC for the G5 PowerPC Macs and seemed unwilling to develop the product for Intel.

No problem Microsoft, there are several better solutions available to run Windows apps on a Mac these days at near full speed, so I doubt Virtual PC for Mac will be missed. VMware, CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Mac, True North Technology’s Northstar, Parallels, or Apple Boot Camp will be happy to fill the space. At least these companies actually have an incentive to have their products give the best performance on the Mac. As long as Microsoft can sell copies of Windows to Mac users, they really do not care who makes the software to run it on the Mac.
Continue reading Microsoft Kills Virtual PC for Mac…

Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote preview of Mac OS X “Leopard” from San Francisco’s Moscone West. See the video-on-demand event right here exclusively in QuickTime and MPEG-4.

Apple has reduced the prices on its Cinema displays. The big 30 inch has been slashed $500, and is now $1999. The 20 inch Cinema display is now $699 and the 23 inch is $999. Might be a good time to upgrade.

I was recently asked for an easy method to save a video seen on YouTube to the person’s Mac. I found TubeSock, that can grab YouTube videos from the web and copy them to your video iPod, Mac, or PlayStation Portable by just copying & paste the YouTube URL and click “Save.” TubeSock knows how to convert the FLV flash video that YouTube uses with the codec and bitrates best for each device. It will even add the video to iTunes for you.
Continue reading Save YouTube Videos to Your iPod…

Apple previewed the next generation of OS X “code-named” Leopard this morning at the WWDC (World-Wide Developers Conference) in front of a packed house of cheering developers. This new MacOS 10.5 will not be available to Mac users until spring 2007. Since Apple claims that Microsoft has already copied some OS X features including a lot of the look and feel, Apple has chosen only preview ten (10) new features from the upcoming Leopard.
Continue reading Leopard is Getting Ready to Pounce!…

The WWDC Keynote is over bringing Mac users the new Mac Pro and new Xserves. This completes the Intel transition for Apple in a just amazing 210 days! These are the fastest Macs yet sporting two new 64-bit Xeon, or “Woodcrest,” Dual-Core Intel processors. That’s right all these machines are now quad processors in 2GHz, 2.66GHz, or 3GHz. And at 3GHz with 4 MB of shared L2 cache. The Mac Pro runs up to 2x faster than the Power Mac G5 Quad and is available for order today.

The Mac Pro enclosure on the outside looks a lot like the the PowerMac it is replacing. But on the inside the similarity changes with the new Mac Pro accommodating up to four drives and 2TB of storage, 8 DIMM slots to fill with up to 16GB of RAM, and providing up to two SuperDrives. You also have four PCI Express slots, and more I/O ports — including two additional ports up front. Each microprocessor will have its own 1.33GHz Front Side Bus (FSB), with 21 gigabyte per second (GB/s) processor bandwidth. The processors are fed by four-channel, 256-bit 667MHZ memory, up to 16GB—twice as wide as the memory bus in a G5 and faster.

The Mac Pro’s new drive bays snap into place. The machines also include two USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 ports on the front. The standard Mac Pro configuration will feature two 2.66GHz dual-core Xeon processors, 1GB of 667MHz memory, 250GB storage, Nvidia GeForce 7300GT graphics with 256MB VRAM and a 16x SuperDrive optical drive, priced at $2,499. Build to order options will include configurations with processor clock speeds of 2GHz, 2.6GHz and 3GHz, with up to 16GB RAM, 2TB storage, and upgraded Radeon X1900 XT or Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 video cards. Mac Pro’s Apple store’s page simply offers the base $2499 configuration and you can click configure your unit anyway you want in the BTO mode. This is a change in the way Apple has sold their computers in the past. More of a Dell-like process, if you ask me.
Continue reading The New Mac Pro and Xserve Arrives…

Mac users are seeing many different solutions for running Windows on their Intel Mac. Apple provides Boot Camp, a free download and will be included as part of OS X 10.5 Leopard, being previewed for the first time later today at the WWDC in San Francisco. Apple’s Boot Camp solution does require you to reboot your Mac to use Windows. VMware will join several other solutions that will allow users to run Windows (or Linux in some cases) simultaneously with OS X. VMware’s upcoming product is a lot like Parallels that will now see some competition in Mac virtualization.
Continue reading VMware Another Option for Windows on OS X…

A photographer in the San Francisco area has snapped two early images of Mac OS X Leopard by peering through the windows of the Moscone Center West. A banner declaring “Mac OS X Leopard: Vista 2.0″ has been spotted. For a large image see here. Another banner on the opposite end of the floor says, “Mac OS X Leopard — Hasta la Vista, Vista.”
Continue reading WWDC Mac OS X Leopard: Vista 2.0!…

TransGaming’s new Cider software (coming soon to Macs near you) will allow Windows PC games to run on Intel Macs. There’s no rebooting involved and no separate Windows partition to be installed. It all happens transparently. The company claims that Cider games will run as if they were made for Mac OS X.
Continue reading Apple: Cider To Make Windows Games Run on Intel Macs…

Google’s free Picasa Web Albums is designed to allow users to post and share their photos quickly and easily on the web. Picasa Web Albums is listed as beta and available by invitation. I applied for an account using my Google Mail account and was instantly granted access. This service has been available for awhile, what is new is the two free software solutions for OS X that now add another free service alternative to Apple’s .Mac.

Google’s Picasa Web Albums Uploaders beta for Mac OS X, are designed to ease the process of sharing photos with friends and family. These two tools for uploading photos which include a plug-in for uploading pictures from within iPhoto and a standalone application to upload photos via drag-and-drop on the desktop. The software offers one-click Web upload directly from Picasa while supporting scroll, rotation, and zoom functionality.
Continue reading Google Makes Picasa Tools Available For Mac…

While Automator can control many applications right out of the box, it lacks the ability to automate Photoshop. For Photoshop control, you need The Photoshop Action Pack, which provides everything necessary to drive Photoshop CS and CS2 using Automator. For more information see Complete Digital Photography website. This is donation-ware. I would recommend this to any Mac owner that is a heavy Photoshop user.

According to Reuters, Napster Inc. on Wednesday provided a disappointing outlook for its online music service and said its subscriber base had fallen 7 percent in March. Napster may be looking for a buy out stating it would not rule out a sale of the company.

Napster reported losses of $9.8 million for the first fiscal quarter compared with a year-earlier loss of $19.9 million. Revenue rose to $28.1 million from $21 million. Napster’s total paid subscriber base as of June 30 was 512,000, including 4,000 university-paid subscriptions. Excluding university, the number of paid subscribers grew 26 percent year-over-year. Not very impressive I would say. It certainly does not show that consumers really want a subscription service.
Continue reading Napster Subscription Model in Trouble?…