Macs definitely aren't perfect

First that little OS snafu where all user files were deleted, and now Apple is shipping defective or broken machines. What the heck is happening at the World Wide Leader of Cute Computers?

Scattered reports around the Web indicate that there may be one or more design flaws with Apple's 27" Core i7-powered iMac. Many users claim that their high-end iMac systems have cracked screens out of the box, and some units are completely dead on arrival. Among the affected are editors at Engadget, who recently received a new i7 model that refused to boot -- though, a different i7 iMac was fine.

Customers have piled into the Apple Support forum to complain about their busted machines, but Apple has yet to determine the root of the problem. It would seem most likely that the cracked displays are a result of insufficient packaging, poor handling -- or both. The DOA machines could also stem from improper shipping practices, though it is less probable.

Is the guy shipping all these Macs Ace Ventura? I mean a few cracked screens is one thing, but widespread cases of that along with dead machines is not a good sign for quality control at Apple.

PC shipments increase, revenues decrease

We've been hearing a lot of good news lately from the tech sector in terms of dollars and cents, however it seems that the PC industry market value will shrink this year.

According to a report released by Gartner today, worldwide PC shipments will grow 2.8% this year -- though, revenue will fall 11%. The firm's preliminary fourth-quarter forecast indicates that global PC shipments will total 298.9 million units in 2009, and may reach 336.6 million units in 2010, a 12.6% increase from this year.


This news comes after less optimistic research in September, which claimed there would be a 2% decline in shipments for 2009. Gartner said the growth is due to higher-than-anticipated sales in the third quarter, but despite that boost, the market value is still expected to decline. The outfit predicts that the market value of global PC shipments will total $217 billion in 2009, 10.7% less than 2008. That figure may increase by 2.6% to $222.9 billion in 2010.

With all things considered, an 11 percent drop seems about on par with the way everything is going. Growth in 2010 looks promising as everyone starts to pull themselves out of this recession.

Microsoft and Fox News in bed with one another

Well this whole Bing-Google search engine war just took an interesting twist. Look for the cannonballs to start flying after Microsoft is in discussions with News Corp to stop indexing their content with Google News. That's the same News Corp that owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and The Sun. Uh-oh.

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.

News Corp and Microsoft, which owns the rival Bing search engine, declined to comment.

One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan “puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them”.

Things just got really, really ugly. We're about to see an all-out brawl. And I think newspapers are really kidding themselves if they think that selling the rights to their stories is going to save the industry. That's like saying a sports league could survive on TV rights sales alone. Not gonna work.

What you need to know about the Google Chrome OS

Google unveiled its plan for its new operating system yesterday and while I'm sure nobody is still sure what to expect but here's the basics about the Chrome OS...

1. Google Chrome OS is essentially a web browser on 'roids - This is something hard to get my brain wrapped around but essentially the Chome OS will be based largely on web applications (meaning no desktop apps) and a tabular navigation system much like the Google Chrome browser already in existence. This may seem weird but considering how much work people already do online and how many applications are online these days, this is just another way to be speedy on the computer (a webpage opens up quicker than a program). However, despite it's browser roots, it still will be able to handle multiple tasks at once, you'll just have to get use to the navigation.

2. It will update and fix itself constantly - Tired of those "Patch Tuesdays" that Microsoft always rolls out? Chrome OS will always be updating itself to the latest version for security and convenience reasons meaning that everybody will have the most up-to-date versions. If it does find some malware or other problem in the operating system, it will basically just re-download the latest version of itself, bug-free.

3. All your data is online - Everything will be stored online, not locally on a hard drive. While this seems scary at first, if your computer is stolen or broken you can just get a new computer and access all your old files. However, if you're not connected online, that's a different story. This is how they'll be able to pull of the constantly updating and re-imaging of the operating system since your files will not be on a hard drive, hence they wont be swept away when you OS refreshes itself.

4. Chrome OS will only work on Google-approved PCs - Google is looking for very specific types of machines for their OS. They're also going to do away with traditional hard drives and move on to "flash" or solid state hard media, meaning no moving parts. This would mean a boot-up time of around seven seconds on the machine.

5. It should work offline, but I'm not sure how well - You might be able to play games, but if you're not connected and can't access files, I could see this being a serious issue.

Mozilla makes some money

Mozilla Firefox, better known as the browser you download with IE after you buy your computer because it runs quicker than that slug Microsoft saddles you with, reported some interesting financial numbers for the year 2008. They are another tech company that has seemed to be able to ride out these economic times and grow in profit.

Our revenue and expenses are consistent with 2007, showing steady growth. Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenues (Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries) for 2008 were $78.6 million, up approximately 5% from 2007 reported revenues of $75.1 million. The majority of this revenue is generated from the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and others.

2008 revenues include a reported loss of $7.8 million in investments in the Foundation’s long-term portfolio (approximately 25%) as a result of economic conditions and investment values at the end of 2008. Excluding investment gains and losses, revenues from operational activity were $86.4 million compared to $73.3 million in 2007, an annual increase of 18%.

With Google Chrome, the latest version of IE grumbling in the background, Opera and Safari - there is a lot of competition out there for Mozilla. Although don't count out the devoted fanbase of Firefox, which seems to be growing all the time.

Modern Warfare 2 is the best selling piece of media ever

Fighting terrorists and other countries apparently ranks high in the minds of people as Modern Warfare 2 has raked in truckloads of cash. In fact, its raked in more cash in a five day period than any game or movie. Ever.

Wow.

Despite a bit of controversy in Russia, Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 has taken the video game world by storm, and now it is breaking sales records across the entire entertainment industry. The title reportedly generated $550 million in sales during the first five days available, beating all other video game launches and raking in more cash than any movie in the same timeframe.

By comparison, the current worldwide box-office record-holder is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which earned $394 million in its first five days. The Dark Knight holds the US box-office record with $203.8 million. The title has even successfully trounced Grand Theft Auto IV, which pulled in $500 million over the first five days of sales. 

Hear me know, there will be no studying on college campuses for the next three months. 

Internet Explorer to rise again

Even though I use Firefox religiously, Microsoft gearing up for another version of Internet Explorer is big news because I'll have to eventually get a new computer and use this browser to download FF and Chrome.

Microsoft will talk about its plan for upcoming builds of Internet Explorer this week at the Professional Developers Conference
-- though, it will not offer a preview of its next browser, according to CNET. It is also reported that the company is not planning to announce a move to the WebKit engine, despite speculation.

During a presentation today at the conference, chief software architect Ray Ozzie said Microsoft would make Internet Explorer the best Windows
browser, but did not elaborate. Redmond is expected to offer more details during tomorrow's keynote speech, however, which will touch on some "focus areas" for the next version of IE.

One thing that keeps getting me about IE is how darn slow the thing is. While more tests have shown that it's actually a fairly safe browser in terms of viruses and spyware items, it still takes forever to boot up and load pages. So Microsoft... speed things up a bit.

The Russians don't like Modern Warfare

This makes me wonder what they thought of Goldeneye. According to some content in the latest COD game, there's been a big snafu and the game has been pulled off the shelves in Russia. An apparently ban on it is rumored.

Activision is celebrating many successes with Modern Warfare 2 in general. The game opened up to amazing sales and helped contribute to a record-breaking number of Xbox Live connections. It's not gravy worldwide, however, following some recent trouble the game is dealing with in Russia. Despite an initial passing grade, MW2 is now facing an outright ban in Russia due to controversial content.

In particular the scene in which a player is put into an airport in Moscow has caused an upset, though for what specific reasons hasn't been clarified yet. Neither Activision nor the Russian government has released an official statement on what the situation is, but for now the game has been pulled from shelves in Russian stores. There's also rumors (though nothing official yet) that the game may face an outright ban.

So we don't know what it is yet? Can you say lame? Apparently they have a different idea of freedom over there in Russia, or some weird tastes when it comes to video games. After all, they did make Tetris.

Gamers up in arms about Modern Warfare 2's multi-player system

Gamers tend to like Call of Duty's awesome multi-player feature, which can basically suck up your entire day due to it's extreme enjoyability. Trust me in college, there was a week where we didn't have school due to snow and guess what I was doing that entire week? With the release of COD:MW2, it seems some gamers are up in arms about a few things.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released worldwide this week to an overwhelming success, selling 4.7 million copies on a single day and raking in an estimated $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone. Reviews have been mostly favorable too, at least as far as gameplay is concerned. But there is one group who feels slighted by a series of changes made in this latest addition to the Call of Duty franchise.

Ever since the word was out, PC gamers have been up in arms with Infinity Ward's decision to replace dedicated servers to host multiplayer matches with a proprietary infrastructure called IWNet. This has translated into less control in the hands of gamers, with no way to choose who is hosting matches (one player is assigned automatically), and no ability to kick or ban players from your game.

GASP! That's the end of the world.

Okay, so that does sound kind of annoying and I don't know why IW just couldn't stick with the old system unless there was some sort of concern that we're not aware of. Sometimes you don't want to give gamers too much control but the automated IWNet sounds a bit lame, kind of like Mario Kart Wii's automated and completely random multi-player system.

Makes me was to go use a rocket launcher.

Water found on the moon

Remember that big NASA impact on the moon a while back? Well apparently the data is back and they've found quite a substantial amount of water of the moon. Looks like we might be going back...

Substantial water reserves have been found beneath the Moon’s surface, Nasa announced yesterday, paving the way for a permanent lunar base.

The discovery came from Nasa’s “moon bombing” mission, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) probe, which was deliberately crashed into the lunar South Pole last month. An analysis of the dust thrown up from the impact revealed the presence of about 80 litres of water, or enough for a shallow bath. The results suggest that much larger, more accessible reserves are available at the poles.

“We can announce that we’ve found water — not just a little bit, a significant amount,” said Tony Colaprete, principal investigator for the mission at Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in California.

The exact form of the water is not yet clear, but it is likely to be spread out in small ice crystals. The rocket hit the Moon at an area where the surface temperature is around -230C. This region has not been in direct sunlight for at least two billion years. 

And it's still probably cleaner than the tap water in LA. Wonderful.