Category: Companies

  • New Mac laptops: one step forward, two steps back

    (Updated 10/21/08) Steve Jobs and Co. rolled out their new line of laptops today, making big changes to the existing Macbook, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro models. But with one exception, the new models are more of a step backwards, a lost opportunity, than an improvement. The one indisputable improvement is with the graphics chips.…

  • Sony ereader seeking wide open wireless

    Fascinating week in the land of electronic books and the devices to read them. We got a fresh rumor, complete with picture, about the next generation of the Amazon Kindle which we already know definitely isn’t arriving this year. But the much bigger, non-vaporish news was the announcement of Sony’s third-generation digital book reader, dubbed…

  • Harvard Bookstore gets solid new ownership

    Back in May, I fretted a bit about the future of the Harvard Bookstore (not affiliated with the university), one of the last great indie bookstores left in these parts. Today comes news that a retired tech executive and his wife have bought the store and intend to keep its operating philosophy intact. New owner…

  • How to fix stuck keyboard backlight on Macbook Pro

    Here’s an obscure piece of Mac voodoo that hopefully few people will ever need. I opened up my sleeping Macbook Pro this morning (the 15″ 2.2 GHz mid-2007 edition) and the keyboard backlighting was on full blast. Pressing the F8 key to turn it off did nothing. In fact, the backlight brightness display appeared with…

  • Start saving my pennies: Canon updates 5D digital camera

    Well, after all that waiting for Canon to update its cheapest digital single lens reflex camera with a “full frame” sensor, the new model was finally announced today. The EOS 5D Mark II, announced today, retains the full frame sensor of the 2005 model and gets a host of amazing, 2008-y upgrades like the ability…

  • How much old software do you really need to save?

    Even after the great closet clean-out of December, 2007, my closet is still kinda full. Well, very full actually. One of the things it’s full of is old software program disks and manuals. In this corner, we have the game Master of Orion II for Macs, issued in the mid-1990s. That’s fine as there’s also…

  • Review: iTunes 8 is nifty but in need of a few tweaks

    Downloaded the latest, greatest version of Apple’s iTunes software this morning and I’m finding a lot of love from the new “genius” recommendations. There are a few annoyances that can easily be fixed in an 8.1 — or even 8.01 — version but on the whole it’s a worthy upgrade. By default, the genius is…

  • Fixing my blog’s del.icio.us widget without a widget

    I tend to read a lot of web pages every work day and they can all blur together if I’m not careful, or the coffee machine is on the fritz. So I use a couple of methods of saving and organizing my webstream, including Google Notebook for stuff that’s highly relevant to whatever project or…

  • Apple fixing broken keyboards right in the store

    (Updated 9/8) I’m super-impressed today with how much repair work Apple is performing on broken keyboards right at the local-store level. I really munged up my Macbook Pro’s keyboard this week. I spilled a little bit of water on it but the even worse move was my next — I tried to “dry out” the…

  • Absolutely, positively no new Kindles in 2008

    I guess it’s a day for short posts! New York Times reporter Brad Stone did what reporters are supposed to do and asked Amazon chief spokesman Craig Berman about all the rumors of new Kindles. Berman didn’t beat around the bush: “One thing I can tell you for sure is that there will be no…