Warning! Geeky content within. Those of you who know what VLANs are are probably interested in this article. In the past, Apple only supported VLANs (802.1q) when using OS X Server. It wasn't a huge deal, as servers are much more likely to need this than clients, but it …

Some of you know that I run a small fleet of Apple XServes. There are some in two-post racks at the house, and some at our super-secret hosting center in four-post cabinets. We're going to talk about what we've found with rack mount hardware and the older and newer generation …

This is a warning for those using TaxCut (a pretty good Macintosh Tax program) and possibly other installers and upgraders. The TaxCut upgrade installer scans all connected disks looking for copies of the software to upgrade. This is going to become an increasing issue going forward not only because of …

Many of you Macintosh users out there are concerned for the safety and security of your data. This article will describe how to use the built-in disk image capability of the Macintosh to create a secure file storage location for your important documents. Disk Images are special files that function …

An article from MacWorld tells that analysts from The Yankee Group (unlike those from Gartner and some other IT analysis groups) think that both the security and policy issues about the iPhone have been overblown. Basically, it boils down to not being any worse than any other smart phone, and …

Many moons ago, Parallels was the only game in town for Macintosh virtual machines. The software is good, but there is a new player in town. VMWare, the big name in PC virtualization has thrown its hat into the ring and is expected to release version 1.0 of VMWare …

There are plenty of stories floating around these days, such as Apple faces mounting complaints on iPhone battery from MacWorld. I have an iPhone and have owned (and still do) a number of iPods and thus expect to be dealing with the battery issue any day now, except that I've …

Last night, Apple released the first update to the iPhone, software version 1.0.1. The update is only available via iTunes and is automatically applied the next time you sync. If you haven't applied it yet, you might want to do so before the weekend, as the big hack …

Apple's biggest name has finally sent a reply to Greenpeace about the environmental leadership (or lack thereof) of the Company. On May 2, Steve Jobs posted his second open letter, this time discussing Apple's environmental policies. The letter serves as mostly a defense of the company in view of efforts …

According to an article from MacWorld, Sun has committed some engineering resources to getting OpenOffice running on the Macintosh natively. OpenOffice is a multi-platform office productivity suite that acts as a substitute for Microsoft's Office products. Of particular interest is the rationale provided by Philip Lohmann, project lead at Sun …

Yes, I know it's not the end of the world. Yes, I know it's not Vista's 4-year trek through the world of vaporware. Yes, I'm aware that I'm not currently writing anything that depends on it, but there are some people I know who have been waiting for Leopard to …

It's not a Microsoft-bashing column, but this Computerworld article by Scot Finnie, Computerworld's online editorial director, takes Microsoft to task over what he sees as ignoring demands in the market and Apple's recent moves. In particular, he's talking about the enterprise, so he doesn't go into the Xbox vs …

Last year, I managed to convince 8 people to get Macs who either had not done so in the past, or who were coming back to the Mac from a long hiatus. Although I had for many years not considered myself an evangelist for "the cause", recent changes in Windows …

An article in Fortune today goes to the heart why Apple's seemingly ill-advised move into the retail world has succeeded. Interesting read.

Fortune Magazine is out with their America's Most Admired Companies 2007 report and you-know-who made it in the list at #7 overall. They were bested by: GE, Starbucks, Toyota, Berkshire Hathaway, Southwest, and FedEx and managed to squeak by Google for the top tech/computer spot in the overall competition …

For a much more thorough description of the intricacies, check out this post on CNet about the issue. As some have pointed out in private correspondence, there is, in fact, no requirement that this be done exactly the way Apple is doing it. However, it is a requirement that the …

Everyone's favorite computer company (pardon me, after the removal of the word "Computer" from Apple Computer Corp's name, it should read "everyone's favorite company") has announced their FY1Q numbers (4th quarter 2006 calendar year) and they're huge. $1B in profit, $7.1B in revenues, 21M iPods sold, and 1.6M …

Maybe not applicable to everyone, but for those with network monitoring needs, the folks in Australia at Lithium Corp. are showing a nice commercial client-server network monitoring system. What's the big deal? There are a ton of these and most of them are free? Well, this one has an XML-based …

Cisco Systems's general counsel has stated online that the company is suing Apple over the name "iPhone". Sounds reasonable, as we all know that Cisco's iPhone has been shipping (most recently) for the past 9 months or so (after an hiatus in the previous five years or so). But …

For those curious about high-speed wireless connectivity, you can check out Apple's 802.11 FAQ where they inform us that all Core2 Duo machines (except the 17" 1.83GHz iMac) are capable of N.