“We estimate that Apple’s iPad business accounts for 4% of the $267 Trefis price estimate for Apple’s stock compared to about 3% for Apple’s Mac desktop business,” Trefis writes for Seeking Alpha.

Trefis highlights the three factors that make the iPad more valuable for Apple than Mac desktops:

1. Pricing gap between iPads and Mac desktops expected to narrow over time
2. Unit sales of iPads will exceed Mac desktops sold (We expect Apple to sell 4 million iPads in 2010 compared to 3.8 million Mac desktops.)
3. Gross margins for Mac desktops are lower than iPad margins

Full article here.

“Apple plans to introduce HDMI connectivity on some of its personal computers this year, embracing an emerging trend that has seen the high-definition audio/video interface crop up on an increasing number of systems from rival PC manufacturers,” Kasper Jade and Prince McLean report for AppleInsider.

“More specifically, prototypes of a new Mac mini — Apple’s smallest and most affordable system, commonly employed by tech savvy Mac users as an ad-hoc living room media server, has been making the rounds with an HDMI port in place of its legacy DVI connector, according to two people familiar with the matter,” Jade and McLean report. “Only Apple TV [currently] provides an HDMI connector capable of delivering both audio and video signals to an HDMI display.”

Jade and McLean report, “However, another product floating around Apple’s labs is a proprietary mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter that the Mac maker had originally developed and intended to ship alongside its most recent iMac revision, according to people with knowledge of the situation. It’s said to include technology that would allows Macs shipping with an updated mini DisplayPort spec to channel both video and audio through the mini Display port to the HDMI adapter, rather than just video.”

Read more in the full article here.

“Apple, which holds its annual shareholder meeting tomorrow, is enjoying healthy dollar growth in its Mac business, according to analyst firm Needham & Company,” James Rogers reports for TheStreet. “‘Apple’s discipline in holding Mac prices fairly steady in the face of plunging Windows PC prices translated into dollar share gains in the December quarter,’ wrote analyst Charles Wolf in a note released Wednesday. ‘The Apple story could contain an upside surprise if the Mac can sustain the relative growth rates it sustained in the September and December quarters.’”

“According to Wolf, Macs accounted for 10.5% of total dollars spent on home PCs worldwide during the December quarter, up from just under 4% in the fourth quarter of 2004,” Rogers reports. “Apple’s performance in the U.S. home market was even more impressive — it holds almost 20% of the dollar share.”
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“The Macintosh is back in the engineering segment,” David Morgenstern reports for ZDNet.

“Engineering, which was often lumped into the beat called ‘SciTech,’ once was strong segment for the Macintosh,” Morgenstern reports. “Then in the early 1990s, the platform’s position was weakened and then lost. But now the Mac appears poised for a strong return.”

Morgenstern reports, “One piece of evidence was the release by Computational Engineering International (CEI) of a Mac-native version of the company’s EnSight CFD, software for analyzing and visualizing computational fluid dynamics… In addition, German developer Graebert this week announced its ARES CAD platform for Mac, Windows and Linux, which supports AutoCAD-compatible command line and scripts.”

Full article, including a recounting of how NASA Mac users once got screwed by an idiotic policy of standardizing on Windows, here.

“Have you ever tried to track a near earth moving object in a telescope? In a word, don’t,” Jeffrey Mincey reports for Mac360.com.

“Google brought me to Freefall, a Mac and Windows application that, well, tracks satellites all over the earth,” Mincey reports. “What’s special about Freefall, besides the drop dead simple interface and easy search capability, and the fact that it makes my new Mincey Family Telescope a big paperweight with a lens, is the view.”

Mincey reports, “I was trying to view satellites from my telescope here on earth; no mean feat. Freefall [US$34.95] lets you view a bunch of satellites from the view of space—looking earthward from the sky, above the satellites—right on your Mac’s screen.”

Full article, with more info and screenshots, here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Just recently, Apple released new 13- inch  and 15-inch MacBook Pro having a feature never seen in an Apple laptop: a Secure Digital (SD) memory card reader.

The reader is handy for transferring videos and photos from a camera, but you can also use the reader with an SD Card startup disk. This is helpful for when you need to troubleshoot the MacBook Pro.

Roman Loyola of Macworld provided a video on how to create a SD card startup disk for the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros. The video can be found in their Youtube channel: Macworld. Materials needed are SD card with a capacity of at least 8GB, and the OS installation disc that came with the laptop.

Download Macworld Video #114

• Format: MPEG-4/H.264
• Resolution: 480 x 272 (iPhone & iPod compatible)
• Size: 11.5 MB
• Length: 4 minutes, 3 seconds

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