Salesforce.com, a huge corporation that develops CRM software may be making the switch from PC to Mac in the near future. Salesforce is currently signed up in an agreement with Dell, but as their licenses expire, their IT department is apparently planning for a switch over to Mac. Reasons for the switch are hazy, but one major factor is said to be security. Salesforce would rather pay the extra expense up front to purchase Mac systems, instead of paying insane costs to safeguard all of their Windows systems.

Salesforce is somewhat buddy/buddy with Apple already. They were on-board with Apple from the start with iPhone, and were even brought on stage at the iPhone SDK event some time back.

As per usual, this is just rumor and speculation at this point… But what a huge switch that would be. Could it be that we’ll see more and more large corporations making the switch to Mac, especially now that the iPhone has arrived on the enterprise scene?

[via MacNN]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: iPhone SDK, Making the Switch, Salesforce.com

Apple has plans in the works to open some new Apple Stores in China. However, if you’re in China now, and absolutely need to get your hands on some new Apple gear, you can now head to Best Buy. Turns out Apple has brought their Best Buy partnership over to China and has opened their first mini store over there.

This new mini-store is located at the Best Buy store in Shanghai’s Xuhui area. With the number of people in China, and especially in and around Shanghai, I would expect the store to already be doing very well!

The store is the only Apple store in mainland China at the moment, and it only occupies about 50 square meters! On display are roughly 60 kinds of Apple computers and accessories.

[via ChinaTechNews]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: Apple China, Apple Stores, Best Buy

Starbucks and Apple have announced a new ‘Pick of the Week’ promotion. The promotion offers Starbucks customers a chance to download and listen to complimentary new music and videos each week. Featured artists thus far include a pretty good lineup including Carly Simon, Counting Crows and more.

Every Tuesday more than 7,000 Starbucks locations in the US (sorry Canada) will stock a new ‘Pick of the Week’ download card redeemable at the iTunes Store. The card will get you a complimentary song or video hand-picked by Starbucks and iTunes. The first pick is Counting Crows’ new song ‘Washington Square.’

Once the Pick of the Week cards are distributed via Starbucks locations, customers have up to 60 days from the date of issue to redeem via iTunes.

Eddy Cue, President of iTunes commented:

“Pick of the Week provides an incredible way for Starbucks customers to discover great new music and videos for free on the iTunes Store.. With the world’s largest online catalog of music and video there is truly something for everyone.”

I kind of like this idea. I like Starbucks. I own more than one Mac… I run iTunes… and I enjoy music. If this promotion was only available in Canada I’d be all over it

Read the Press Release >

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: iTunes, Pick of the Week, Starbucks

Time Machine now allows for users to use the Airport Extreme’s Airdisks as Time Machine locations. I could hear cheering around the globe when this new found ability was hunted down…No need to buy a Time Capsule now if you already own an Airport Extreme Base Station, right? Well hold on to your horses because the joy hasn’t lasted long. (Yes, yes I know Mike reported on this earlier, but I just had to add my own comments )

Latest word out of Cupertino is that the Time Machine + AirPort Disk combo is officially ‘unsupported’ by Apple. What does ‘unsupported’ mean? Well, if you absolutely insist on usint Time Machine with an AirPort Disk as the backup location… Don’t go crying to Apple for support when things go wrong. If you’re a risk taker and are OK with the fact that you could potentially lose all your backups, or have this functionality removed by Apple in the future, then have at ‘er. However I wouldn’t recommend doing so. Backups are so insanely critical… Do yourself a favor and pick up a desktop drive or Time Capsule to back things up properly.

Apple has been surprisingly silent on this issue since word broke, and I’m not expecting to hear much more, honestly. We’ll see how long this functionality sticks around… For all we know, Apple could wipe out this functionality in the next AirPort Extreme Base Station or Time Machine update.

[via arstechnica]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: AirPort Disk, Time Machine

Apple has filed a lawsuit to stop New York City’s non-profit ‘GreeNYC’ from using their logo. Seems as though apple believes the GreeNYC logo is just to close to the Apple logo… hence the problem.

This is humorous and ironic to me for so many reasons. If you look at the two logos, I don’t really see any similarities other than the fact that an apple is used in both logos. If you’re not allowed to have an apple in your logo, then Mr. Jobs (well ok, the Apple legal team) should start making a long list of companies to file suit against

C’mon Apple.. take a breather here… They’re even a non-profit for … sakes.

What’s your take?

[via Slashdot]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: Apple Legal, Apple Logo, GreeNYC

I’m sure you all remember the ‘millions of colors’ lawsuit that was settled out of court not so long ago. The suit claimed that MacBook and MacBook Pros were ‘fooling’ Apple users into thinking the displays output millions of colors… When in reality a dithering technology was being used to simulate the promoted color depth. The suit never took off due to the plaintiffs having a tough time finding support for their views… And now it looks like we have another ‘copy cat’ case.

This latest lawsuit was filed in San Jose and is arguing basically the same thing, except this time it’s all about the 20-inch iMac. The issue remains that Apple claims the 20-inch iMac can display ‘millions of colors at all resolutions’ when in reality the plaintiffs are arguing that the dithering technology ‘tricks’ us into believing we have that color-depth.

The 24-inch model of the iMac has an 8-bit display and does indeed display millions of colors. Over 16 million in fact. However the 20-inch model is a 6-bit display and will only display slightly over 260,000 colors BD (before dithering)

We’ll have to see if this suit can drum up the support the previous ‘millions of colors’ case lacked. Time will tell what happens… If nothing else this is keeping Apple’s legal team on their toes.

[via arstechnica]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: Dithering, iMac, Lawsuit, Millions of Colors