Patent trolls – mere shells of companies that go after potential infringements in order to rack up some hefty legal fees and maybe a settlement or two – don’t have an institutional memory. Take the great iPad in China debacle. What you see above is ProView’s “iPad.” The eagle-eyed among you will note that is bears more than a passing resemblance to the old iMac, circa 1998.
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Apple and education have always gone hand in hand, from the first Apple IIs gracing libraries across the nation to the countless aging machines now in place at schools everywhere. Now, however, a new version of the iMac (not shown here) may allow schools to upgrade on the cheap.
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Don’t tell the kids this, but it’s almost back to school time and Apple is reportedly gearing up for a major push this August. Apperently several large hardware refreshes are on tap with both the Mac Pro and Mac mini set to get new innards.
It’s about time, too. The iMac got in on the Intel Sandy Bridge party just last month with the top of the line model now packing more computing might than a much more expensive Xeon-packing Mac Pro. Intel’s latest chips are just that good. But this refresh isn’t just about the processor. Oh no, it’s a whole lot more than that. → Read More
Sometimes my iMac gets a little chilly and I like to cover its toes with a blanket. But, thankfully, there is now something called an iMac slipper that allows you to protect your iMac’s feet with a little leather bootie. It costs $35 and most of your dignity, but by all means, pick it up for yourself. → Read More
The best part of the iFixit teardowns — besides the gadget pr0n — are the notes found on the last step. iFixit grades the given product in terms of its repairability and then comments on the highlights. The new iMac scored 7 out of 10 where 10 is the easiest to repair. iFixit notes that while it’s relatively easy to disassemble the iMac, “Making the LCD and glass spotless when reassembling the machine is nearly impossible.” But at least you can replace the RAM, hard drive and optical drive with “relative ease.” → Read More
For the past six years or so, my main desktop machine has been a string of iMacs. As an all-in-one machine, they’re both great to look at and simple to set up and use. But the power user side of me was always left a bit wanting. And it sounds like the iMac upgrades Apple has just unveiled this morning may fix that.
First of all, they’ve solved perhaps my single biggest complaint about the iMac: there’s finally a way to hook up two external monitors to the machine, giving you a total of three screens, Apple confirmed to me earlier today. Ever since I started using dual monitors a few years ago, I quickly realized only one thing would be better: three monitors. But the iMac could not do it — only the Mac Pro could. Again, not anymore. → Read More
Although the last iMac refresh took place in July, we heard rumors a little while back that new ones would be arriving early this year. And with Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt, the expected improvements, ready to go, it seems like the new iMacs could drop any time. And what’s this? 9 to 5 Mac hears whispers that supplies of current iMacs are running low. You know what that means. Expect the news some time in the next month, perhaps as early as next week. → Read More
Can’t say we didn’t see this coming. It seemed like each day there was another random source or sign that Apple was preparing to update the iMac and Mac Pro. Well, most of the rumors were right. The changes aren’t really all that special and simply evolutionary in nature. Still, we’re not one to turn away new components. → Read More
The Internet has been quietly turning out Apple rumors over the last few weeks. Something about new Mac Pros here and new iMacs there and a multi-touch desktop trackpad thingie. It might all come to the surface tomorrow if John Gruber of the Internet is believed. → Read More
Seems people really like those all-in-one PCs à la the iMac. Sales this year are expected to grow some 63 percent from last year, to 11.5 million units worldwide. And while that’s good news for computer makers overall, there are winners and losers in the data. The big surprising loser? Yup, Apple. → Read More
IOS on the next iMac? That’s the rumor going around this morning. The deal is that Apple wants to bring touch controls to its desktop offerings, and will use the next iMac revision to test the waters a bit. So, you’ll have your standard Mac OS X installation, but then when you activate “touch screen mode,” you’ll switch over to iOS. → Read More
Got a MacBook Pro or iMac that needs a little customizing? Head over to this Etsy store for a bunch of lid and chin graphics. We’ve seen a few of these over the years, but there are a bunch that are at least brand new to me, including a Goatse decal that’s not library appropriate and a Scarface-themed decal that will make all your bros jealous. → Read More
As you may have heard by now, many of Apple’s new 27-inch iMacs are more like iLemons. While the systems themselves are fine (and fast) there have been a ton of reports about problems with the screens (including mine and at least one other TechCrunch writer). Apple issued an update on December 21 that did not fix the problem for most of those users. Today, they have issued another update — so far, so good.
While the December 21 update was titled “27-inch iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0,” this new update is called “27-inch iMac Display Firmware Update 1.0.” A slight variation, but a big one, as this apparently is altering the display firmware itself rather than that of just the graphics card. As with the other update, this takes a few minutes to install. This update is also about half the size of the previous one. → Read More
When we last wrote about the problems with the new 27-inch iMac’s screen a few weeks ago, there were over 1,600 replies on Apple’s support board about the issue. That’s 110 pages of replies. And the thread had been viewed some 260,000 times — much, much more than any other thread. I’m fairly certain more than all of the other ones combined, actually. Those numbers now? Try 2,860 replies, 191 pages, and over 400,000 views. Yeah, this problem is not going away.
Amazingly, Apple still has yet to reply to these messages piling up. Yes, they issued what they said was a fix for the problem, but that was actually before our post. Obviously, for many people, it did not work. I happen to have one of these affected Macs, and randomly, I think I’ve stumbled up an easy, but janky fix. It doesn’t solve the issue, but it does seem to eliminate for a while. → Read More
Regular readers will know my affinity for Apple products. In general, they’re high quality, and I’m willing to pay a bit more for that. But a lemon is a lemon, regardless of who it’s made by, and must be labeled as such. These new 27-inch iMacs? Lemons.
In case you haven’t heard yet, the screens on these massive things are failing left and right. Granted, not all of them seem to be affected, but 110 pages worth of support questions/rants on Apple’s Support page for the issue tells me the problem is pretty widespread. That’s 1,640 replies, so far. And that thread has been viewed an incredible 264,630 times. The next closest recent page with that many views has 26,852 — and guess what? It’s also about a problem with the 27-inch iMac screen.
Two days ago, Apple issued a fix for the issue. The only problem? The fix doesn’t appear to work. → Read More
Apple just dodged a bullet.
A New York federal judge dismissed a potential class action lawsuit which alleged that Apple propagated their popular iMac screens without disclosing certain manufacturing defects to its customers, saying that the allegations were too general to be considered.
The lawsuit stated that unwanted vertical lines would appear on the devices after the warranty period had expired and that Apple “internally recognizes and concedes” the defect, but did nothing to warn consumers. → Read More
The 27-inch iMac, darling of all and sundry, are having some shipping issues. Orders are currently backed up two weeks and the litany of problems, including broken displays and busted hard drives, shows us that this model wasn’t quite fully baked. → Read More
Today was supposed to be a joyous day in my apartment. As of yesterday, my new Apple iMac was to be delivered at some point this afternoon. But alas, it was not to be. But the reason why is a truly great WTF moment. Apparently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has to approve its delivery to me.
Well, to be more specific, either the FDA or the Department of AG/PPQ has to approve it, according to UPS. Seeing as the FDA having anything to say about my computer makes no sense, I decided to check what the latter department was. Apparently, it’s the Department of Agriculture. Again, WTF? → Read More
Just a PSA, really: The newest iMacs are somewhat limited in their capability to be used as external monitors for your laptop. I’d consider the functionality to be a bonus to begin with, but if you were going to be relying on it, better make other plans. It seems that the DisplayPort on 27″ iMacs (there isn’t a video in on the 21.5″ ones) is a bit picky on what it takes an input from. Using various adapters, iFixit determined that at the moment, the only devices which can use the iMac as a secondary display are those equipped natively with a Mini DisplayPort. I won’t editorialize here other than to say what’d you expect? Apple was going to ignore the chance to sell another accessory? → Read More
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