NewsApple Sued Over Multitouch Patent
Posted 04/09/09 at 08:24:14 PM by Pulkit Chandna
Little-known tech companies sporadically rise from their anonymity to sue their more illustrious peers. Taiwanese company Elan Microelectronics is slowly becoming adept in this practice; it had earlier sued Synaptics and now taken Apple to court. On Tuesday, Taiwanese chip designer Elan Microsystems filed a patent infringement suit against Apple in the U.S District Court in San Francisco.
According to the company, it was left with no other choice after two years of licensing talks didn’t bear any fruit. “We couldn’t find a common viewpoint with Apple, so we decided we had to take action,” a spokesperson for the company told The NYT.
Elan has accused Apple of violating two off its patents related to touchscreen technology. It maintains that the MacBook and iPhone/iPod Touch violate its patent rights.
NewsReport: 4GB RAM and GPU Problems Plague New MacBooks
Posted 12/10/08 at 03:55:36 PM by Paul Lilly
According to Engadget, a pair of problems have popped up on Apple's refreshed MacBook line, the first of which has to do with maxing out the RAM. Some users have complained that running 4GB, whether it be from Apple or a third party, is turning their MacBooks and MacBook Pros into pricey paper weights. With 4GB of RAM installed, affected users claim their MacBooks suffer from random freezes and the only solution is to downgrade to 3GB or 2GB. Apple hasn't yet acknowledged any known issues with maxing out the RAM, but forum users aren't the only ones reporting problems - mobile technology blog site jkOnTheRun reports seeing the same thing.
The other issue rumored to be affecting Apple's new MacBooks comes from news and rumor site The Inquirer, who claims that the MacBook Pro's Nvidia 9600M GPU suffers from the same material defect that affected previous MacBook Pros equipped with Nvidia's 8600M GT GPU. As The Inq tells it, to see the problem:
"You would need to buy a MacBook off the shelf, disassemble it, desolder the chips, saw them in half, encase them in lucite, and run them through a scanning electron microscope equipped wiht an X-ray microanalysis system like this. This is exactly what we did."
The Inq posted several pics with accompanying analysis, which it claims proves that at least some current MacBooks are still using older Nvidia chips containing 'bad bumps,' which in the past has led to blank screens and other video errors in some cases.
NewsGreenpeace Unimpressed by "World's Greenest Family of Notebooks"
Posted 12/03/08 at 05:32:15 PM by Pulkit Chandna
Apple is finding it extremely difficult to avoid being in Greenpeace’s cross hairs. Nearly a year ago, Greenpeace branded the iPhone as “toxic”. Now, the organization has flayed Apple’s pompous claim that its Macbook line of notebooks are the greenest there are.
The Macbook range of notebooks scored a highly disappointing 4.3 out of a possible 10 points on the organization’s green index. Greenpeace did laud Apple, though very frugally, for doing away with bromide flame-retardants and other toxic plastics. But it clearly believes that Apple should take more steps to substantiate its towering claims.
Greenpeace has put the ball in Apple’s court by asking it “to commit to phasing out additional substances with timelines, improve its policy on chemicals and its reporting on chemicals management.”
NewsOverpriced MacBooks Claim 20% of Notebook Market, Foolish Hipsters' Money
Posted 10/01/08 at 12:20:05 PM by Paul Lilly
By our own admission, MacBooks aren't half bad. In Maximum PC's Apple's Notebooks Take On the PC Competition, Apple's MacBook walked away as best-in-class in the professional segment, much to the dismay of the PC faithful. But that doesn't mean we're willing to squeeze our wallet dry to own one.
On average, you can expect to pay twice as much on an Apple PC versus a Vista computer. And people are doing just that. Windows PCs still dominate the lion's share of the market at 80 percent, but Apple continues to cling to a respectable 20 percent slice of the pie. Making its piece even more savory, Apple's making over 35 percent of the revenue share. Think about that. Despite claiming one-fifth of the market, Apple's cashing in on over a third of the revenue.
These numbers come courtesy of the latest NPD sales information, but some feel that Apple has done as well as it ever will at the current price point. Joe Wilcox from eWeek writes, "What's next? I predict that Apple's grab for dollars has gone about as far as it can, without price cuts. Apple's higher prices buck industry trends."
That may be the case, but can trendy hipsters be expected to buck the trend of overpaying?
PDF ArchivesAugust 2008: PC Notebooks vs. the MacBook
Posted 09/08/08 at 07:04:16 PM by The Maximum PC Staff
In the PDF archive of the August 2008 issue, you can find:
- PC vs. MacBook Notebook Battle!
- Ultimate Guide to Firefox 3
- Nvidia's Next-Gen GTX 280 GPU Unveiled!
- How To: Create your own Internet TV Show!
- Awesome Product Reviews, including MSI's new P35 Combo Platinum mobo!
- Ask the Doctor
- Rig of the Month
- The Watchdog
- And a whole lot more!
Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!
NewsRumor: Next MacBooks Might Not Use Intel Chipsets
Posted 07/29/08 at 03:09:13 PM by Paul Lilly
Intel's Centrino 2 platform hasn't even gotten its feet wet in the PC pool yet, and if a new rumor turns out to be true, Montevina won't be making waves in the new MacBooks expected to arrive within the next two months. If it happens, the change would mark the first time Apple turned its nose at Centrino in its MacBook line since 2006.
According to AppleInsider, not only might the new MacBooks abandon the Montevina chipset, but the new chipset may have nothing to do with Intel at all. Instead, the rumor suggests Apple might be busy designing the new chipset entirely in-house just as it did with its PowerPC-based Macs.
If not in-house and if not Intel, that only leaves a few other third party chipset manufacturers, such as Nvidia, AMD, or VIA. For all its recent problems in the mobile market, Nvidia might be considered a long shot at first glance, but recent reports suggest Nvidia might be willing to ditch its alliance with VIA in order to build a chipset for Intel's Atom processor. Could this be the opportunity Nvidia has been gunning for?
FeaturesApple's Notebooks Take On the PC Competition
Posted 06/24/08 at 09:14:14 PM by The Maximum PC Staff
From the Air to the Pro, Apple’s MacBooks are winning the hearts and minds of consumers everywhere—including PC enthusiasts. Maximum PC investigates whether the hoopla is warranted.
What do you really get for the money when you throw down for a MacBook, and how do these Apple computers compare to their PC counterparts in terms of performance, features, overall usability, and price? Maximum PC tests and reviews the MacBook Air, the standard MacBook, and the MacBook Pro against five PC models sporting similar price points and formfactors. It’s time we set the record straight.
ReviewsApple MacBook
Posted 06/24/08 at 04:55:50 PM by David Murphy
Apple’s little white wonder of a MacBook excels against its PC counterparts, but it’s no Gandalf. As expected, gaming is this laptop’s weakest link. And even complex multimedia tasks can cause the MacBook’s magic to wither.
Still, in most applications, the Vista-booting MacBook performed admirably. Find out how admirably after the jump.
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