If you ever needed a reason to move away from a Microsoft environment….

9to5 Staff

The TimesOnline published  information on a new Microsoft Patent that…

links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state. 

Admittedly, systems like this could be used for good.  If workers are overstressed, they could be given breaks or slow down work.  However, with all things like this, the potential for misuse is huge. 

 

What do you think? 

Kiss your NAS goodbye?

9to5 Staff

UPDATE: HA! This was much closer than anyone thought – great work!

NAS=Network Attatched Storage btw.  Yeah its a long shot but we like the idea!  Macrumors forum member tacojohn pointed us to this – hey!  Photoshop images can still be real ;P.  More picts and "specs" after the jump.

  • 500GB or 1TB (RAID 1)
  • WiFi Only
  • Bonjour Networking
  • iTunes & iPhoto library storage
  • Any Apple wifi device can stream from it & sync with it
  • $399 & $499

 

Oh, and relax people, yes its fake in case you didn’t get the vibe from the above "hints"!

 

Apple Enterprise frustration continues

9to5 Staff

Apple, for all of its recent success, really hasn’t done what seems so easy for HP, Dell and Lenovo — Make a dent in the enterprise.  Yes, some smaller firms are finding a great deal of success rolling out the MacOS and a large number of companies have creative departments with Macs.  However, no large company, with perhaps the exception of Apple itself, has gone completely Mac.  Huge creative conglomerates like WPP and Omnicom would be lucky to hit 50 percent.

Computerworld today laments on the issue, blaming Apple’s priorities and lack of any desire to dive into this lucrative market.  If Apple ever had a better chance to hit the big time market share gains it would be now – with Vista bombing hard.  However, the following concerns were given for the lack of adoption:

  • Legacy concerns
  • Cost of support and ownership
  • Are third-party software vendors on board?
  • The complexity factor
  • No second source
  • Service and support

Until Apple addresses these concerns, marketshare isn’t going to move much – Apple might get a few points here or there but double digit gains won’t happen.  Also, as sad as it is to say, Apple needs to start marketing itself in the enterprise space.  It is very difficult for Macintosh Administrators to overcome perception that Apple isn’t ready for the enterprise.  Most business leaders don’t think the Mac platform is Enterprise-worthy and most CIOs are too change-adverse to investigate making a switch. 

Until Apple spends some time and money on the enterprise space, their marketshare will continue to hang below 10%.  Maybe things will change next week?

 

 

New 8 Core Apple Xserves and Mac Pros released today

9to5 Staff

Apple today announced the availability of Apple Xserves that utilize the Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors.  Eight cores, 1600Mhz bus, 32GB of 800MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory supported.   As we said yesterday, Apple didn’t use an event to announce this.  Specs over at Apple.

The Mac Pros also got a set of Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors  – which means nothing new design-wise at Macworld.  Check the specs.

Not too shabby. But not terribly impressive either.  The cheesegrader design is getting kinda tired.  And no…

  • New enclosure, smaller/lighter?
  • BluRay (or HD-DVD) burning capability
  • eSATA built in for fast external storage
  • Video card upgrade is good, not great.
  • Not much else new.

Yawn.  Bring on Macworld.

 (Oh – I guess the glass 1/2 full way to look at this is that something that Apple wasn’t sure would make it to the Keynote has made it and bumped this news off of the Macworld docket.  Rentals?  Tablets?  Oh my!)