Last Word

Death knell for the Wintel PC

by Kenny Hemphill on 10 February 2011 in Last Word
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The breathlessly exciting, seemingly endless stream of announcements from the Consumer Electronics Show in January, detailing the latest in 3D TVs, me-too tablets and televisions that will run apps, may have caused you to miss the most significant development of all: the death of the Wintel PC.

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Is it game on for Apple?

by Kenny Hemphill on 6 January 2011 in Last Word
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As you can see from our Predictions feature (see p52), 2011 is set to be an exciting year for Mac users. Apple, of course, is already looking way beyond 2011 in order to determine how it can consolidate on the incredible success it has enjoyed in the past few years and build an even bigger, better company.

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Apple still means business

by Kenny Hemphill on 13 December 2010 in Last Word
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So long, Xserve. In January 2011, Apple will stop selling the Xserve. For most Mac users and Apple customers, it will barely register. For a significant minority, it will herald a complete re-think of their system architecture. For while Apple nods in the direction of the Mac Pro and Mac mini as potential replacements, no company that relies on rack-mounted servers will be happy with a tower or mini. Neither have support for power supply redundancy or easily swappable storage drives, for example.

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Patent reform pending

by Kenny Hemphill on 25 November 2010 in Last Word
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Reports that Microsoft is using Android-related patents to stop Asus and Acer shipping netbooks with Android on them may or may not be wide of the mark. However, by claiming it’s owed licence fees for every Android installation, wherever that occurs, Microsoft has shown what it’s prepared to do to regain a competitive edge.

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Cupertino’s unsung heroes

by Kenny Hemphill on 11 November 2010 in Last Word
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Fifteen years ago, the only place in the national press you were likely to read about Apple was in the business pages of the broadsheets, and it wasn’t pretty reading. In 1995, the company was struggling, really struggling. Its market share was sliding faster than a skeleton bobsleigh and, more importantly, it was making heavy losses. Its plans for the future were, at best, sketchy and it didn’t seem to know how to capitalise on the then-emerging World Wide Web.

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The Playbook: fact or fiction?

by Kenny Hemphill on 26 October 2010 in Last Word
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Cast your mind back a few months to the start of the year, when Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad. We’re in a large auditorium in San Francisco, crammed with developers, journalists and Apple fanatics. The mercurial CEO sets the scene by highlighting what Apple believes is a gap in the market between the [...]

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