apple

NEW YORK--On Friday afternoon at the hour that Apple launched its latest operating system, Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, it was pouring rain in Manhattan. It was also windy and chilly. That didn't stop several hundred people from lining up outside the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue to get their hands on the new software, huddled underneath Gore-Tex jackets and umbrellas.

"It's the cult," commented another reporter who had also been covering the water-saturated event.

The line for Leopard appeared to be divided fairly evenly between rabid Apple fans and shoppers who'd figured they could … Read more

If you want to use the Time Machine feature in Mac OS X Leopard to set up automatic backups, you'll have to find a networking cable.

In the advance marketing material for Leopard, which goes on sale later today, Apple had promoted the ability to connect an external USB hard drive to an AirPort Extreme wireless router (Airport Disk) and use Time Machine to wirelessly back up the hard drives of Macbooks scattered around a home. Time Machine, one of the more universally liked features in Leopard (click for CNET's review), is designed to make backing up and … Read more

During the Microsoft antitrust trial, one of the company's PR execs named Mark Murray would dutifully approach the press microphone on the courthouse steps in Washington, D.C., each afternoon to declare: "It was another good day for Microsoft."

That was called playing the part of loyal soldier in the face of debatable circumstances. But if Murray were called upon to sum up this week's events, I think he would describe it as a very good week for Microsoft.

And he'd be right.

In fact, it was a helluva week--one of the best the company … Read more

NEW YORK--At about 1 p.m. EDT in midtown Manhattan, I overheard a group of suit-clad thirtysomething men talking as they waited to cross Madison Avenue.

"You know, leopards are solitary animals," one of them said. The other three or four continued musing on the characteristics of the large exotic felines, and I figured that it was actually part of a conversation about Apple's latest operating system, which launches Friday at 6 p.m. I thought, wow, if fratty midtown office types are talking about Mac OS X 10.5, there must be a huge line of … Read more

Progress is measured in steps both big and small. The smaller ones may get less attention, but they are much easier to take.

It's been a year of big steps for Apple. The company dropped the "Computer" from its name in January as a way of showing Apple was no longer just about the Mac, and the clear priority for 2007 in Cupertino was to get the iPhone out the door and selling briskly. Then, perhaps for kicks, it decided to overhaul its entire lineup of iPods.

Later today, Apple will take a smaller step, with the … Read more

Tomorrow may be the day OS X Leopard makes its way out to the unwashed masses, but we were lucky enough to get our hands on a (legal) copy of the operating system earlier this morning directly from the mother ship in Cupertino. Besides the snazzy new look and feel, the big things we wanted to get our hands on were all the Web features we've been drooling over. We picked four that we think people are actually going to use, including Web Clips, RSS feed reading in the new Mail app, Web search history in Spotlight, and Wikipedia … Read more

An excellent item last month comparing the desktop designs of Apple and Sony by our colleague Matthew Elliott drew some of the most reader comments seen on Crave in months. We won't wade into that territory again but wanted to pass along this item from Engadget Japanese to show that we're hardly the only ones to draw parallels between the two companies.

Engadget says the photos are "official, un-doctored press shots from both Apple and Sony" of an older iPod Nano and the new Sony Cyber-shot released yesterday, respectively. Even the colors and position of the … Read more

The exact details of AT&T's revenue-sharing agreement with Apple have not been disclosed, but one analyst thinks that over the two-year life of a user contract, the amount exceeds the actual price of the iPhone.

Silicon Alley Insider spotted a research note from Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster estimating that Apple is receiving $18 per month for each iPhone subscriber, under the revenue-sharing agreement between the two companies. Apple has confirmed that such an agreement exists, but has not shared the details about exactly how much cash it's getting from the revenue AT&T makes … Read more