SA Tech News Roundup Today

Neotel declares war on Telkom
FMTech's Duncan Mcleod, is running a story on Neotel's new offerings, a R99/month option without voice or data bundles, with a Neotel to Neotel rate of just 17c/min, and data rates of just 8c/MB, one of the cheapest in SA.
The second option is a R199/month plan that includes a 1000 Neotel to Neotel minutes and 200 SMS's to cellular operators.
“This is by far the best value for calling to any landline phone during peak hours,” says Mukul Sharma, executive head of the consumer business unit at Neotel. “There is no minimum charge per call, it offers true per-second billing and there are no peak or off-peak rates for on-net calls. There is also no installation fee.”
Neotel is finally giving consumers what they want, a real value for money alternative to Telkom!
Read the full story here.

Green Opportunity
Mybroadband is running a story on e-waste, and Johnny Clegg, musician, and now it seems, recycler. This story is quiet pertinant to yesterdays post of Apple's Going Greener

Microsoft raids Durban dealers
Mybroadband also has a short story of a raid on 2 Durban dealers suspected of selling illigal software.

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Apple Q4 Results

Here is a brief breakdown of Apple's results for the fourth quarter 2008:

                                         Q4 2008                  Q4 2007
Apple Shipped Macs:      2,611,000                 2,164,000       21% Growth
iPods:                              11,052,000                10,200,000     8% Growth
iPhones                            6,892,000                 1,119,00
Revenue                          $7.9 billion               $6.22 billion
Net Quarterly Profit        $1.14 billion             $904 million
diluted share                    $1.26                        $1.10
Margin                             34.7%                       33.6%

International sale accounted for 41% of the quarters revenue. Apple has reached their goal of 10 million iPhones, Steve Jobs himself was on the call, and mentioned that Apple had now sold more handsets that RIM, and that Apple had cash reserves of $25 billion, and no debt.

They did not mention that the Mac mini line would end or be refreshed!

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Get a Mac Ad

A new "Get a Mac" ad is out, and oooo, Apple is getting nasty. How the fragile peace between Apple & Microsoft remains is a wonder. This ad is beyond friendly banter, but the best thing to do is to go and watch it yourself here.

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No More Mac Mini?

According to Gizmodo, the Mac Mini might be discontinued, which would not surprise me, especially in it's current form. Looking at the current line up, it's certainly due for a refresh. Whether it will disappear all together is a story for the rumor sites. Gizmodo is reporting that 2 European retails has confirmed that can no longer order the mini's, and their impression is that the noble Mac Mini is dead!

As a child of failed Apple Cube, was the Mac mini doomed to the same fate. It has certainly received less of Apple's marketing vooma, and has stood silently out of the spotlight of products like the iMac's and MacBook's. As an owner of a Mac Mini, it was perfect in my office set up where an iMac would have been over kill. Here's hoping that the Mac mini is due for a serious refresh, it has a big part to play in Apple's overall range. Steve Job's labelled it as the "most affordable Mac ever", and now days, "affordable" is a good word in any tech companys range.

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Beware of MacGuard!

The debate continues whether or not Mac's are safe from viruses, and after a bit of research, Mac users have less to worry about, compared to our poor windows brothers and sisters! But beware, for no hacker rests, and the people from Intego have warned against a bogus website macguard.net. It is a word for word copy of winguard.com. WinGuard "hijacks the user's desktop and typically displays exaggerated or false claims of spyware found to frighten the user into paying for the program," according to Sunbelt Malware Research Labs. Though nothing downloads when clicking the macguard download link.
The company behind winguard, Innovagest 2000 SL, may be using the credit card numbers they collect when buying the software.

Simply put, the warning is this, do not trust any website that proclaims to be doing something good! We all are ultimately responsible for our own actions on the net, and need to be vigilant at all times.

This is a list of some of the website reporting this problem:
TUAW
ars technica
MacDailyNews
Intego
Sunbelt

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Apple's Going Greener

I picked this story up of the TUAW site, the icon on the system preference for Energy Saver has changed from an incandescent bulb to a CFL, very cool. This change is only on the new MacBook's & MacBook Pro's. I wonder if it will be coming through to the rest of Apple's line up?

Apple is really going green. The latest line of MacBook's & MacBook Pro's have an EPEAT Gold (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) rating. The glass and aluminium make them highly desirable to recyclers, making them less likely to end up in land fills, and less likely to be dumped on "third world" nations as cheap PC's, and not leaving the poorer nation to deal with electronic waste.

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Apple Q4 2008

Apple will be announcing it's fourth quarter earning today at 5pm ET, which is 11pm South African time. Most sites are predicting a good fourth quarter despite the global economic slow down, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
A list of a few sites that will be covering the event live today are:
TUAW
macdailynews
And streaming straight from the Apple's mouth, follow this LINK

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