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Why wouldn't Apple document performance-boosting APIs?

Vladimir Vukićević from Mozilla's Firefox team eventually managed to turn Firefox 3 into a speed demon on Mac OS X. But Apple sure didn't help with the process.

Apple may not have been trying to cripple non-Apple applications on Mac OS X, but the fact that it's not open source means that the world is beholden to Apple's whims, as Vlad writes:

I do not think that Apple is in any way trying to purposely "cripple" non-Apple software. I also do not think that undocumented APIs give Safari any kind of "significant performance advantage" (as Firefox 3 should show!). … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 671: Vista Price Patch 1

Episode 671

Microsoft cuts Vista price http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/vista_price_cut/ http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9882510-56.html

iPhone/iPod SDK: Apple to approve, distribute apps, limit add-ons http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ iphone-ipod-sdk-apple-to-approve-distribute-apps-limit-add-ons/13537 http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/29/ iphone-software-development-to-be-locked-down-by-apple/

Bluetooth not working after iPhone 1.1.4? Simple fix: http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/02/28/ bluetooth-not-working-after-iphone-114-simple-fix/

Mac OS X secretly cripples non-Apple software http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/28/2339246

Wii outsells the PS3 4-to-1 in Japan, Sony execs “not psyched” http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/29/ wii-outsells-the-ps3-4-to-1-in-japan-sony-execs-not-psyched/… Read more

ThinkPad X300 available Tuesday

The latest incarnation of the ThinkPad makes its official debut Tuesday.

The X300 from Lenovo is, you may have heard, rather waiflike in size.

Weighing in at just under 3 pounds and measuring less than three quarters of an inch at its skinniest point, the X300 has already been poked and prodded by plenty of tech reviewers.

CNET's own Michelle Thatcher called it her "new BFF" of ultraportables. See for yourself whether promises of 10-hour battery life, a 64GB solid-state drive, a variety of ports, and a starting price of $2,799 are charming enough to lure … Read more

This week in laptops

The X300 is here! The X300 is here! The last few days at CNET Laptop HQ have been consumed with Lenovo's latest ThinkPad, which first popped up last week. The verdict? It's the sleekest ThinkPad yet, and quite possibly the perfect balance between portability and usability. Check out our full review on the ThinkPad X300 page and, if you missed it, the photo slide show here on Crave.

Though the ThinkPad X300 is totally my new BFF favorite ultraportable, it's not the only alternative to the MacBook Air, as Dan Ackerman points out. Among his suggestions is … Read more

Photos: ThinkPad X300

Lenovo's much-anticipated competitor to the MacBook Air finally arrived in our office this morning. The skinny ultraportable laptop may look a bit square--it is a ThinkPad, after all--but its 13.3-inch screen, full-size keyboard, and built-in DVD burner earned admiring glances from multiple passersby. We're busy at work on the review, but in between benchmark runs this afternoon, we took some photos of this, the sleekest ThinkPad yet. Take a spin through our ThinkPad X300 slide show, and keep an eye on the ThinkPad X300 product page for the complete review and CNET Editors Rating.

Penryn comes to Alienware and Gateway laptops

Dell updated its XPS line of laptops earlier this month with Penryn CPU offerings, and now it's sharing Intel's latest mobile processors with its wholly owned subsidiary, Alienware. The Area-51 m15x now offers three Penryn chips, the Core 2 Duo T9300 and the T9500 and the Core 2 Extreme X9000. Pricing starts at $2,149. If you're scoring at home, Dell's 13-inch and 17-inch XPS laptops have received a Penryn update, skipping over the XPS M1530. Meanwhile, Alienware's 15-inch laptop has the Penryn and its 17-inch model does not.

Elsewhere, Gateway has made its first … Read more

Former CEO of AOL joins OpenX as chairman

OpenX, one the industry's largest ad networks and the dominant open-source ad server company, just got a little bigger. OpenX announced that Jonathan Miller, former CEO of AOL, has joined the company as its chairman. Writes Scott Switzer of the announcement:

Jon has much experience working with major advertisers, as well as large and small publishers. He understands how difficult it is to provide software, service, and media to medium to small publishers, which is the core user base of OpenX. He can help us grow from a small company to a larger one. He understands our need to … Read more

Openads becomes OpenX--what's in a name?

Openads just changed its name to OpenX. OpenadsX is one of my top open-source software picks, given its potential to roil the ad server business. With its competitors (like DoubleClick/Google) taking 40 percent to 50 percent of a Web site's advertising revenue, the company's model of charging peanuts to advertisers to source publishers is a big boon to content publishers, 30,000 of which have signed up to use OpenX.

But after talking with publishers, Openads decided that it could provide more value than advertising revenue:… Read more

Rush wants Apple's Time Machine to back up e-mail

Rush Limbaugh provided a little more detail Wednesday on the Mac issues that have been driving him batty (yes, more so) since he upgraded to Leopard.

The bombastic radio host has been a Mac user for years, but on Tuesday he complained on his show about issues with six Macs that he runs on a network, without providing any details. The story made its way around the Mac community to a mixture of curious and hostile responses, and now Limbaugh has outlined his two main beefs.

The first one is the Back to my Mac feature introduced with Leopard isn'… Read more