New and Noteworthy: Vista Will Have Little Impact on Mac Sales: Analyst; The serpent in Apple's garden; more

Vista Will Have Little Impact on Mac Sales: Analyst PC Magazine reports on analysis that surveys retail outlets, finding the Windows Vista will likely have little impact on Mac sales. "In a Feb. 14 research report, Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, surveyed 50 Best Buy retail stores and found that while the launch of the consumer version of Vista in January has driven buyers to look at new PCs, it does not appear this will affect Mac sales. Of the 50 stores surveyed, 72 percent told Munster that Vista was driving an interest in new PCs, while only 29 percent said it wasn't. However, 80 percent of stores reported selling less Vista operating systems than anticipated." More.

The serpent in Apple's garden The Motley Fool opines that a serpent lurks in Apple's online media paradise in the form of current movie studio alliances. "Apple seems to be ignoring its own lesson here. It won big with iTunes music by following common sense and listening to consumers. It may have missed out on sharing a bigger slice of the revenue pie with record labels, but without iTunes' cheaper prices and reasonably fair approach to DRM, Apple's attempt to spark a digital download revolution may have been doomed before it even began. In the long run, giving your customers what they really want -- not what you think they should want, or what you want to give them -- is the smarter, more profitable choice. In siding with the movie studios and shackling consumers' choices when it comes to video, Apple's setting itself up for a fall. While Jobs and co. enjoy the forbidden fruits of fatter sales served up by the studio serpents, Apple's leaving the door wide open for some leaner, smarter, more consumer-friendly company to topple its dominance, just like Apple did to the record labels." More.

ATI Radeon R600XTX with CrossFire destined for Macs? The Inquirer speculates that ATI's upcoming R600XTX card is designated for Apple. "We can now reveal to you that the board you have been seeing around the web is actually a specific design which has only one customer right now. The name of that customer is Apple and it will also be available in Crossfire mode. While we have zero doubts that Dell XPS/Dellienware and some other parties will pick it up as well, right now, the nice red cooler design is just Apple's and Apple's alone. [...] The current estimate is that the memory will float between 1 and 1.1GHz GDDR-4 memory in DDR mode (2.0-2.2 GHz), while the GPU clock will be set around 800MHz. Some say 826MHz, but we're not sure how far the Overdrive will go. We'd say not beyond 850 MHz, but that is just my personal opinion." More.

Previously on MacFixIt:

• Microsoft Office 2004 11.3.4 released: Stability, security enhancements
• AirPort Extreme Base Station 802.11n (2nd gen.): Slower speeds with WPA2 encryption enabled
• iMac G5: Fails to startup

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