When I think back to the history of Apple I look to none other then Oregon Trail. What stood out about Oregon Trail was that we were playing a video game in school. Whenever we would finish our keyboarding exercises we were treated to a rousing diskette based experience that rivaled even kickball for the best thing we got to do at school.

Now as we flash forward a decade Apple has become synonymous for it’s chic design philosophy and pension for quality. With the move to Intel processors, Apple has shed its monopolistic style to business even allowing, and supporting programs that allow for multiple operating systems (including Windows) to be installed. For around two years my current PC has actually been a Macbook Pro, and I couldn’t be happier. I get the best of both worlds, a stable Operating System and the ability to use a PC for its intended purpose…..Games.

With the release of the 3G iPhone and the launch of the application store in July, as well as an uncharacteristic release of the iPhone development tool; Apple may be preparing for its own entry into the handheld, and perhaps console war?

Apple is placed in a very precarious position, they have a very successful product in the iPod, yet they still have yet (more…)

Hon Hai Precision Industry’s Foxconn factory has come forward and owned up to the fact that they’ve been violating Chinese labor laws. The UK’s Daily Mail first drew attention to this issue a couple of weeks back when they printed an expose on the conditions at certain Chinese factories responsible for manufacturing ipods. A Foxconn spokesperson has publicly admitted to forcing workers into an extra 80 hours of labor per month (44 more than the Chinese government allows). On the plus side, company representative Li Zong claims that employees are being paid salaries that conform with the minimum wage laws of the local Shenzhen government. We’ll post updates to this story as they are available

ABC Family will be debuting it’s new original show Kyle XY on iTunes on June 20th, with it’s television permier to follow on the 26th. It seems as though the television networks are finally getting their feet wet when it comes to digital distribution of their content. The movie industry could learn something here.

Reports of leaking liquid cooled power mac G5’s have been floating around for a little while now, and it turns out that faulty Delphi radiators used in early models are to blame. If you have an older liquid cooled powermac G5, pop the side panel off, and make sure there’s no green goo sitting in the bottom of the case. If there is, stop using it immediately, and either go to your nearest repair shop, or call Apple and see if they’ll do anything for you.

Apple has responded to claims made by the UK’s Daily Mail about poor working conditions in its Chinese factories.

From the statement:

“Apple is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible,”As you may have already read, some of the claims against the Chinese factories in question included workers working for 15 hours a day for the equivelent of $50 a month and living in on site dormitories and not being allowed contact with the outside world.

It’s good that Apple released a statement saying they’d at least look into it…. they could have just denied the whole thing, but they didn’t. Many companies use these types of facilities, and hopefully news like this will inspire a change in the industry. A change where people matter more than profit………. hey, I can dream can’t I?

Oh Apple, why must you judge your laptops by the color of their case? I see laptops based on what’s inside….. and apparently what’s inside of the black Macbook (which costs $150 more than the white one) is an inferior hard drive. Those Mac fanatics over at Macworld took a suped up white Macbook and benchmarked it against the black Macbook with what seemed like the same parts in it, and the results were a little suprising: the white Macbook outperformed the black one by a noticable and consistant margin on tasks such as Compressor MPEG-2 video encoding, and using iMovie to apply the Aged Video filter. When switching the hard drive from one Macbook to the other, the results followed the hard drive (not suprising since it was the only part not identical in the two computers). Check out the rest of the article over at Macworld for more information and benchmark results