Microsoft Windows

89 'Microsoft Windows' stories October 2008 - February 2014

PC Market exodus continues as LG considers quitting, Mac prices & margins leave Apple almost immune

Ben Lovejoy Feb 6 2014 - 7:32 am PT

ultrabook

PC manufacturers seem to be dropping like flies at present. Shortly after Sony confirmed it was selling its PC business and Vaio brand, LG is rumored to be planning its own exit from traditional PCs, to focus on smartphones, tablets and ‘convertible’ PCs (touchscreen Windows tablets that flip round into a laptop).

Other manufacturers are witnessing falling sales, prices and profits – with The Guardian calculating that the average profit per PC in the third quarter of 2013 fell to just £14.87 ($24.09). One manufacturer of conventional-format PCs, however, has remained almost immune to the trend: Apple …
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Need occasional access to Windows on your Mac? Install it from a USB key …

Ben Lovejoy Feb 6 2014 - 5:28 am PT

24 Comments

xghGJD2

If you need occasional access to Windows and don’t want to install it from a DVD, a how-to guide by Sam Power may have the perfect solution. It talks you through exactly how to create a Bootcamp-compatible USB key installer for either Windows 7 or 8 compatible.

A 4GB USB key is sufficient, and the complete process can be done in 20-40 minutes.

(Update: sorry for the confusion. You can’t install Bootcamp onto a USB Key yet. You’ll need Paralllels or VWMware for that.)

iCloud.com glitch suggests iCloud Bookmarks viewer coming to website

Benjamin Mayo Jan 29 2014 - 10:48 am PT

8 Comments

A glitch on iCloud.com suggests that Apple will soon add a way to view iCloud Bookmarks on the iCloud.com portal. The screen, shown above, appears briefly at this URL when users try to install the Chrome extension from the iCloud Control Panel for Windows.

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AAPL returns to growth, predict analysts, as we await quarterly earnings call

Ben Lovejoy Jan 27 2014 - 5:29 am PT

1 Comment

aapl

When Apple reports its quarterly earnings later today, the news will be good, according to the consensus view of 47 Apple analysts compiled by Fortune.

Analysts are expecting the company to report earnings of $58.1B for the final quarter of last year (Apple’s fiscal quarter 1), representing 4 percent earnings growth over the same quarter last year. This would be right at the top end of Apple’s guidance of $55-58B, and the first time in a year that Apple would have reported year-on-year growth …
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Total Apple device sales will equal Windows PCs this year, predicts analyst

Ben Lovejoy Jan 14 2014 - 5:40 am PT

13 Comments

total

The total number of Apple devices sold will equal the number of Windows PCs by some point this year, predicts Asymco’s Horace Dediu in an interesting piece of analysis.

The dark shaded area compares all Apple hardware – Mac plus iPad plus iPhone – with Windows PCs, and shows that by last year there were only 1.18 more Windows PCs than Apple devices. It’s of course a somewhat artificial comparison, as Dediu is including iPhones while excluding Windows Phones and tablets, but given the very limited success of Windows mobile devices to date, correcting that wouldn’t change the patterns too much.

What’s particularly interesting here, as John Gruber notes, is that the dramatic reversal kicked in well before the launch of the iPhone. Dediu and Gruber between them put forward a number of theories for this, and of these I think three are likely key …

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How badly Microsoft missed the mobile ship: 70 percent of Windows users own an Apple product

Ben Lovejoy Jan 8 2014 - 7:04 am PT

14 Comments

If ever there was a simple visual to illustrate just how slow Microsoft was to wake up to the shift into mobile, it’s this one: a full 70 percent of Windows users also own at least one Apple product.

While there will be some joint Windows/OS X users in there, the majority of them will be people with Windows PCs and either an iPhone, iPad or iPod.

Via Business Insider

Eye-Fi announces software for direct camera-to-Mac transfers

Ben Lovejoy Jan 7 2014 - 7:35 am PT

2 Comments

Wifi-equipped cameras have long been one of those things that promise more than they deliver. In theory, you can take a photo on your camera and have it instantly and wirelessly transferred to your Mac. In practice, not so much. You either need to go via an iOS device, or go via a router with ridiculously-convoluted networking configuration required to make it work.

Eye-Fi seems to be getting one step closer to the theory, announcing beta software at the Showstoppers CES event that allows photos to be sent direct from camera to Mac. The beta version is free, though you have to register for the company’s labs project to get access, but it seems the release version will be chargeable.

The app is only compatible with Mobi cards – earlier versions won’t work. Hopefully the reliability of the cards has improved since I last tried them.

Comparing the newest Apple, Nokia marketing spots makes us weep for humanity

David Beren Dec 18 2013 - 12:01 am PT

14 Comments

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7xVrI-tUIQ]

There’s been no shortage of debate regarding Apple’s latest holiday commercial as some have found it inspiring and emotional as others find it ridiculous and lacking a clear message. There will be debate in the coming weeks over Apple’s intentions with the message and whether or not they succeeded in tugging at our heartstrings. That being said, Apple looks like a gem, an angel, a bright light on a dark road compared to Nokia’s newest ad for the Lumia 2520. It’s true that Apple may have paused its traditional product-first advertising angle and replaced it with an arguably emotional holiday spot for the iPhone 5s, but it works leaps and bounds better than Nokia’s latest embarrassing excuse for advertising.

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Macupdate’s $40 Winter Bundle: 12 apps incl. Anonymizer, Backblaze, Expandrive, much more

Seth Weintraub Dec 4 2013 - 4:12 am PT