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Asus Announces Eee Top All-In-One, Meant to Compete With iMacs

Andy Salisbury — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:19:27 -0600

Just this week Asus announced their brand new Eee Top desktop computer, which is meant to directly complete with Apple’s juggernaut, the iMac.

The Eee Top is a fancy take on desktop computing, that features a 15.6-inch touch screen, 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB DDR RAM, a 160GB 5,400RPM hard drive (boo!), a 1.3-megapixel webcam, and built-in WiFi. The price point is set at about $580 USD, but sadly the machine is only available in Taiwan. The rest of us will have to wait!

Though, the wait will be worthwhile, because if 15.6 inches sounds like it’ll be to small for you, Asus has a 20 and 22-inch version slated for release in June.

Flash Headed to Smartphones; Apple Still Holding Out

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:33:32 -0600

At a series of press events over the past few days Adobe has unveiled a brand new version of flash aimed directly at smartphones. The new version of Flash is optimized to work with ARM processors (like the one used in the iPhone).

So long as your smartphone has a processor clock speed of at least 200MHz and 16MB of RAM, it should be able to run the new Flash. It’s also mentioned that a “completely capable browser” is required, but given the phones that it’s meant for, there shouldn’t be any issues.

Google’s G1 is expected to get the update soon, among others. Whether it’ll be simply downloaded by the phone itself or updated in-store is yet to be revealed.

While many other smartphone vendors are prominent when it comes to excitement about the possibility of Flash on their phones, Apple isn’t. Steve Jobs has mentioned that Flash “performs too slow to be useful” on the extremely popular iPhone. To many this seems like a match made in heaven, but Apple has politely snubbed that notion.

Backlight Manufacturers: LED Prices to Drop 40-50% in 2009

Andy Salisbury — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:07:06 -0600

Major notebook vendors like Dell and Apple are going to have a much easier time delivering those beautiful LED backlit screens in the near future, as the price of LEDs are projected to go down by 50%.

While the amount of notebooks that actually had LED backlighting in them was only 5-6% in the first three quarters of this year, that’s expected to shoot all the way up to 25% during this fourth quarter. Even still, it’s projected that up to 40% of notebooks will have LED backlighting in 2009.

At the current rate, it looks like LED backlighting will be standard sometime real soon. That’s a bright future that we look forward to.

Don't Expect a Dell MP3 Player This Holiday Season

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:00:32 -0600

Dell has decided to pass on releasing their MP3 player this holiday season. With no real reason cited for the delay, it looks like Apple can sit back and let their iPod dominate the sales charts once again.

While the release of the MP3 player has been put on pause, their work on the planned entertainment software, Zing, has continued and is expected to release sometime this fall. Zing is purported to organize downloaded music and movies on PCs.

With any luck, this will give Dell more time to finely tune their product. Jumping into an Apple dominated market isn’t something that… anyone has succeeded at. But with 2003’s DJ Ditty failure behind them, perhaps Dell has learned their lesson.

Apple Cuts iPhone Production by 40 Percent

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:12:54 -0600

Apple has cut their Q4 iPhone production proposal drastically from what they had originally planned, according to a report by Freidman Billings Ramsey analyst Craig Berger. Having originally set out for a 10 percent drop, recent data suggests that production could drop more than 40 percent.

This data however, doesn’t necessarily reflect a significantly slowing iPhone demand. While the production is slowing down, iPhone shipments won’t be 40 percent lower.

Lowered production numbers could have a lot to do with the hurting economy, and the fact that Apple deliberately produced an excess of iPhones in Q3 to help provide some excess supply.

According to Berger, “…iPhone production plans are being revised lower suggests that the global [macroeconomic] weakness is impacting even high-end consumers, those that are more likely to buy Apple's expensive gadgets, and that no market segment will be spared in this global downturn. This is a negative signal for global demand, in our view.”

New Mac Before the Holidays? Apple Says Forget About It

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:49:48 -0600

For the first time in… ever, Apple has gone ahead and crushed a rumor. Specifically, about the possibility of there being new Macs before the holidays.

A (previously) circulating rumor about the chances of a new Mac mini or iMac being released before this upcoming holiday season has been debunked by Apple spokesman Bill Evans. Evans, clearly being a man of few words, simply stated, “our holiday lineup is set.”

Translation; this isn’t Apple pulling anyone’s chain. If you’re looking to buy someone a shiny new toy from the Cupertino giant, go right ahead. They’re not going to risk making the Apple faithful or new switchers mad by releasing a new version of a product right after they’ve finished their holiday shopping, so put your mind (but not your wallet) at ease.

Microsoft Takes its Fight to the Apple Store

Justin Kerr — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:30:35 -0600

Die hard Apple fans love to defend their platform, and that’s okay, it’s actually good to know they are capable of emotion. But is this really what passes for a news story? The popular web tabloid AppleInsider.com ran a news feature on Friday criticizing Microsoft’s decision to place a Vista campaign booth outside an Apple store in Birmingham England. The booth was apparently set up to record I’m a PC videos for possible use in upcoming marketing efforts. Some of the clips gathered are slated for use in TV commercials while others will be used for web promotions. In addition to gathering video clips, Microsoft staffers are on hand to convert potential Mac customers back into the fold. The booths are the continuation of the Vista ad campaign which started with Bill Gates and Jerry Sienfeld, and more recently matured into the “I’m a PC” initiative.

So are Mac users whining again?

Click the jump and let us know what you think.

Psystar Shipping Mac Clone with Blu-ray, 9800GT

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:33:43 -0500

Psystar, a leading Mac clone manufacturer, has stolen a march on Apple by launching the very first OS X-compatible PCs outfitted with Blu-ray drives and GeForce 9800GT graphics cards. Psystar president Rudy Pedraza lampooned Apple, in a press release, for having still not embraced Blu-ray despite the fact that it has already won the HD format war.

He heavily extolled Blu-ray, which he believes is a huge asset for media editing professionals and enterprises - a demographic that Psystar can now serve.

Psystar is certainly trying its best to get under the skin of Apple whose patience must be wearing thin. Around a fortnight ago, Apple and Psystar agreed to an “Alternative Dispute Resolution”. Prior to that, in July, Apple had slapped a lawsuit against Psystar. The latter soon returned the favor by filing a lawsuit of its own against Apple.