Could we be seeing cheaper Mac products on the market this year? Is Apple going to have to lower their prices in order to compete with Windows PC, Dell and other companies who are boosting their computer’s ability, while maintaining a lower price?

Joe Wilcox on AppleWatch shows comparison cost and hardware on a mid-range Mac and Dell Inspiron 518:

iMac: $1,199; 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 20-inch widescreen display (integrated), 1GB DDR memory, 128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics, 250GB hard drive, 8x double-layer DVD burner, Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11 g Wi-Fi, Webcam and Mac OS X 10.5.

Inspiron 518: $739 (after $150 instant savings); 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 19-inch widescreen monitor, 3GB DDR memory, Intel GMA X3100 graphics, 500GB hard drive, 8x DVD burner and Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1.

Apple will continue to hold its edge on the market because of its user-friendly system, yet complex and cool image, but Apple must deal with competitor’s attempts to revolt against Apple’s image and higher priced products. Apple needs to lower its prices and bulk up on configurations and memory space, maintaining stability in its growing market share and stability in its superior performance.

Finance chief Peter Oppenheimer hints that, “We’re delivering state-of-the-art products at price points that our competitors can’t match, which has resulted in market share gains in each of our products. We plan to continue this strategy and to deliver great value to our customers while making a reasonable margin but not a margin so high as to leave an umbrella for our competitors.”

According to data collected by the NPD group at Gizmodo, the average Windows notebook goes for US$700, while the average Apple laptop costs above US$1,500, dropping a mere US$59 in the last two years. The umbrella’s been pulled out of the closet, and unless Mac lowers the cost of their products while continuing to create loyal customers with superior performance, they run the risk of wind catching their umbrella and blowing them off the top of the computer sales and performance leaderboard.

Will the Chicago Cubs be able to hold on to their division lead? Will Manny Ramirez spark the Dodgers into the post-season? These are questions beginning to intensify as the 2008 MLB season moves into the ‘Dog Days of August’. Wikipedia describes these ‘Dog Day’s’ as, “a time period or event that is very hot or stagnant, or marked by dull lack of progress.” While the baseball days of August may seem ‘dull or stagnant’, the second half of the season is all about the division standings, positioning your team for a spot in the playoffs. There’s still a lot of baseball to be played, so its anybody’s league title to win.

If you’re a baseball fan like me, you love the game: the exciting moments, the heated races, the agony of missing the wildcard spot by a game and the ecstasy of hitting in the winning run in the World Series. While we’re still a ways off from those unforgettable moments in October, the foundation and culmination of the World Series begins now. The Baseball Widget 2.6 is a season tracker’s dream to keeping an eye on the last few months of the MLB season. If you’re a Mariner’s fan like I am, you’re picking a NEW team to root for during the playoffs and this widget can help you keep an eye on your new team. The widget is easy to understand and updates the standings quickly. Click the ’standings’ icon at the top right of the widget to switch to division standings. If you want to know additional information about a MLB team, click on the name of the team in the division standings and the widget will link you to that team’s homepage. This widget can track previous scores of games, as well as the upcoming schedule, so whether you’re curious about the outcome of yesterday’s game or want to know what time to watch today’s, Baseball Widget 2.6 can get you that information quickly and accurately.

I’ll be using this widget as a faithful and reliable companion as the baseball season comes to a climax, sure to bring us exciting games and moments in the months to come. Not only will this widget track baseball standings and teams, but when you’re other favorite sport rolls around, you can track standings and schedules for hockey, basketball and football teams.

You can download the widget from MacUpdate at Baseball Widget 2.6. Question or comment about Baseball Widget 2.6 below.

iTunes has added a whole new component to their iTunes store, that now gives the consumer a chance to not only experience music, movies and podcasts, but to stretch their mind and prepare for school or do extra-curricular learning through iTunes U. “iTunes U in the iTunes Store offers free audio and video content from top universities, famous museums, public media stations, and other cultural institutions. So whether you want to learn from the world’s leading thinkers, get a sneak peek at the latest MoMA exhibition, or simply brush up on your Spanish, iTunes U makes it easy.”

For my personal favorite study topic, American History, I found universities from all over the world, Stanford University, MIT, Arizona State University, universities in Asia and Europe, that had information that I could access and learn from for free. The iTunes store lists top downloads for each category, giving me the opportunity to grow my knowledge base and brush up on topics that I love.

K-12 iTunes U is also a noteable program that gives parents and kids a chance to learn about different topics such as ‘Ask a Biologist’ which interviews scientists and gives students an insight into life applications for Science and Biology, and ‘Caught Reading’, a beginning language arts program to help any teacher or parent in exposing and educating their kids.

iTunes U has now become a learning resource for every person in any category. A chance to do extra research, learn on the go with your iPod or MacBook or simply enjoy the pleasure of learning in a new and creative media format. Whatever your profession or place in life, iTunes U will open and expand horizons of learning that will create broader minds and brighter futures.

57. That’s the number of additional apps that are on my iPhone right now, not installed by default. When you have 57 apps on your iPhone, it takes over 2 hours to sync those apps in iTunes. That’s two hours more than I have to sync my phone, and so I’m going to be cutting some loose.

Yes, I realize that I hoarded apps like a Survivor contestant winning the reward challenge to Hot Dog Island when he first sees the bucket of weenies, but I bet I don’t have the most amount of apps installed out there.

At any rate, I’ll be making some decisions and posting which apps are expendable, and which ones will receive salvation and a place on the desktop. More to come.

This monitoring widget has received a 4.5 star rating at www.macupdate.com and is effective in allowing users to monitor their computers information. “It features detailed information on CPU, memory, hard drives, IP and external IP, bandwidth, CPU temperature, battery, uptime, temperatures and fans.” The widget itself shows important information about the status of your computer and even gives you a detailed, color-coded example of where your computer is running programs, what space you have available in different areas and an easy click help button that links you to iStat Support for troubleshooting or tutorial related questions.

This summer, I personally value two of the monitoring systems that let me know what temperature each of my systems is running at and the rpm exhaust of my computer’s fan. These keep me mindful when I’m out in the sun with my Mac or on the run, as well as the Battery health and charge status, which includes a percentage of charge and time remaining. This way I know when I need to get home to grab my charger, which I usually forget to bring with me to work.

The latest 4.7 edition fixed bugs where sidebar labels could become stuck after changing skins, bugs that could cause widget to crash in network code and fixed bugs with multi terabyte disk support. On the side of the widget, the activity monitor gives you access to locate and monitor which programs are running and taking up the % CPU, the threads of each program as well as the real and virtual memory. The side bar options also include a settings pop up which allows you to set alert intervals, daily updates and modify the display of the iState widget. You need Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and can click here to download iStat.

Let us know what you think of the iStat Pro 4.7 and post a comment here.

When I was just a kid, one of my siblings asked for a Cabbage Patch doll for a gift. I remember my dad running around like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All The Way, trying to find that ugly little thing, and probably aging 5 years in process. I’m catching glimpses of that fiasco every time I call the local AT&T shops and Apple Stores asking about iPhone availability.

I think I’ve finally given in, and let our AT&T business rep order one for me. Expected delivery time: up to 21 days. All because I was camping out, instead of camping out. I honestly would not have expected the 3G iPhone to be a bigger, and quicker seller than the first gen version — many people I knew were planning on NOT upgrading, but apparently many were, and many first time buyers stepped up.

Perhaps the rep will come through with a surprise, otherwise, in about three weeks I’ll do an unboxing….ugh.

I read this morning that Apple is now the No. 3 PC maker in the U.S. with it’s sites set on Dell and HP.  This seems pretty impressive to me given how huge Dell has been historically.  Reminds me of the days when Apple had only a fraction of 1% of the market in terms of users as well as PC sales.

According to Macworld, we may be in the iPhone void for up to another entire month. “I bet we’ll see these problems for another two to four weeks,” said Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co., referring to his estimate of the lead time necessary for Apple to increase orders from its suppliers and restock the depleted iPhone inventory. “Early demand has been more than they expected [because] they knocked it out of the park on the first weekend.”

We can attest to the supply and demand in our area. All local AT&T stores have been out of stock all week and are now saying they are only taking orders for delivery in 7-10 business days. After a call to three local Apple stores in the Portland area, one said they had ‘everything in stock,’ so we made a beeline to pick up a couple. Turns out they sold out of the white 16gb model before we could get our hands on one. They did however have the elusive black 16gb model, which is apparently the hot seller. Again from the Macworld article:

“The hardest-to-find iPhone 3G remained the $299 black 16GB model, which is available Thursday in only 18 stores, or 9.6 percent of the outlets. Supplies of the $199 8GB iPhone 3G plummeted in the last 24 hours, according to Apple’s inventory tool: 24 stores reported it as available Thursday (12.8 percent of the 188 in the U.S.) compared to 42 stores that said it was in stock Wednesday (22.3 percent).”

How long will the void actually last? Hard to say. Are you still in an iPhone void?

It’s been a long time coming…and I know this isn’t exactly breaking news for anyone following Mac/Apple related news topics, but I had to comment.  I can’t believe how long it’s taken for Psystar to get slapped by Apple for stepping on Apple’s hardware toes.  The interesting thing is, based on what I’m reading, this doesn’t appear to be as much about the EULA (End User Licensing Agreement) breach, as about trademark and copyright infringement.  Here’s a link to the initial source we found the news at:

The Gray Blog - “Apple Goes After Clone Maker Psystar”

Personally, I like the idea of Mac clones.  Although I wasn’t a big fan of the clones in the late 80’s, now that we’re on Intel processors, the hardware options become a lot more interesting.  This could end up being a huge boost for the Apple OS and it’s market penetration if they open up licensing at some point.  I’m certainly not saying I don’t like Apple hardware, it rocks.  But I always cringe a bit at the cost of their more robust systems.  Course “cringe a bit” doesn’t prevent me from actually ponying up the bucks to buy a high end system.

There are a LOT of free apps in the iTunes App Store — enough to keep a fella busy downloading and trying tons of new stuff each day! All in all, the App Store is a welcome addition to the iPhone life, even if syncing all those apps is a drawn out process each time you hook up.

Complaining aside, here’s the pick for Favorite Free iPhone App of the Day: Shazam!

Shazam bills themself as the ‘amazing music discovery engine,’ and I would say after just a few minutes of monkeying around with the app, that I concur. It is pretty amazing. According to the website, here are the key features and functionality of the application:

Already an industry standard, Shazam fully integrates with and complements the iPhone’s native environment, allowing you to seamlessly discover, buy and share tunes simply by holding your iPhone to music for just a few seconds.

• Tag music: identify music anywhere - whether it’s on the radio, TV, in a movie or in a store.
• Build your own soundtrack: see the list grow every time music is tagged.
• Get the music: go straight to iTunes to preview and buy.
• Music Videos: see related videos of the track on YouTube.
• Capture the moment: personalise the tag by taking a photo and adding it to ‘My Tags’.
• Share the moment: send track details to friends via email.

The Shazam application enables you to tap into a vast database of nearly 5 million tracks giving instant satisfaction for those times when you want to know the tune that is playing, learn more about the artist, buy the song immediately - or simply add it to your playlist.

In initial run through, we were able to play and successfully track songs from Faith Hill, The Eagles, Norah Jones, The Go Go’s and even Tennessee Ernie Ford. Shazam provided links to iTunes tracks available for purchase, and videos on YouTube.

I don’t even want to know how the engine works, I just want to have this magic application continue to provide many more moments of amazement and wonder! Get it FREE, at the iTunes App Store.