Well it’s now official, we just don’t know exactly when but “some time” later this year Rogers “will” be bringing the iPhone to Canada and “has” worked out a deal with Apple.

President and Chief Executive Officer of Rogers Communications Inc. today issued the following statement:

“We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.”

So now we wait…

Apple today introduced a new set of iMacs featuring faster CPU’s (2.4 to 3GHz), high performance video cards (up to 512MB of video memory) and faster 1066 MHz front-side buses.

The new 20-inch 2.4 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,199 (US), includes:

• 20-inch widescreen LCD display;
• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus;
• 1GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB;
• 250GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive® with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB GDDR3 memory;
• built-in iSight video camera;
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately);
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

The new 20-inch 2.66 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,499 (US), includes:

• 20-inch widescreen LCD display;
• 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus;
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB;
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory;
• built-in iSight video camera;
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately);
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

The new 24-inch 2.8 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,799 (US), includes:

• 24-inch widescreen LCD display;
• 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus;
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB;
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory;
• built-in iSight video camera;
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately);
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

 Get Yours Today

This Popular Mechanics review has been out for a few days now and has received a fair bit of attention! Are Mac users surprised… Not really, I think it’s the PC users who are finding the verdict surprising. What I like the most is the fact that Popular Mechanic is both Credible and Neutral as a tester in this debate. Many Mac vs PC test results could be said to be biased one way or the other where as the Popular Mechanic results are hard to dispute.

And so who is the winner??? Why the Mac of course.

“In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple’s computers were the winners. Oddly, the big difference didn’t come in our user ratings, where we expected the famously friendly Mac interface to shine. Our respondents liked the look and feel of both operating systems but had a slight preference toward OS X. In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software—and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.”

Popular Mechanics also said Vista was sluggish and that PC’s where not the bargain that many computer buyers believe they are getting.

Read the entire Popular Mechanics article here

Here is a common and very good question, which contact management suite should I use? Well if you haven’t purchased Office for Mac 2008 then the answer is pretty obvious, you are going to be using the Mac included contact management solution that consists of three separate programs: Mail, Address Book and iCal.

Now if you purchased Office for Mac 2008 you may just be thinking to yourself, I want to get my monies worth so I may as well use the included MS Entourage Contact management program that seems very “Outlook” like. I’d say the best thing Entourage has going for it is it’s resemblance to Outlook so it may feel a bit more comfortable to some Switchers. There in lies the trap, “Familiarity”… If “comfort or familiarity  is the main reason you are considering going with Entourage you may want to think again.

Now I don’t want to seem like an MS basher but there are some things that you will need to consider before committing to using Entourage, and by committing I mean committing because once all your email, contact lists and calendar events are imported into Entourage it’s not going to be fun having to move them over to Apple’s Mail, Address Book and iCal.

So what about getting your Outlook data over to the Mac, wouldn’t it be easier to move Outlook data into Entourage rather then Apple’s contact management solution? The short answer is it’s the same solution for both, I strongly suggest you pay the $10 to Simple Machines and use (O2M) Outlook to Mac for the heavy lifting. You will shave off hours of your time and the end result will be all your contacts, email and calendar info transferred into either Entourage or Apple Mail, Address Book and iCal - your choice.

Both the Apple and Microsoft solutions will work well and will do most of the same things so what do I suggest, I never thought you would ask? I say go with Apple all the way and here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

David Alison, a self claimed “Mac Hater” wrote up a nice account of his first two months using a Mac. He states the Mac isn’t perfect like any piece of technology but he is finding he really likes using the Mac and in fact he doesn’t really use his Windows/Unix machines all that much anymore - “I’m having too much fun exploring my Mac and scheming to get a Mac Pro.”

Some Quotes:

“Before I got my Mac I was concerned about Right-Click mouse support. I remembered when all Mac mice were of the single button variety and it was something that seemed crazy to me, given the value of having at least 2 mouse buttons. Well, right clicking is very much available and useful on a Mac and in fact I use a 5 button Logitech mouse every day.”

“Over the last 2 months I have downloaded nearly 50 different applications and utilities, though that’s not even scratching the surface of what’s available. The range of applications is staggering and covers just about any category I could think of.”

“One of my favorite applications comes with OS X though and that’s Time Machine. Seamless hourly backups of my machine that took minutes to set up and just happens without me doing anything. I love it when computers do the work for you.”

Read David Alison’s full Article

Personally I think this is one of Apple’s best “Get a Mac” ads because it makes the statement that “Mac’s operating system and hardware are all made by the same people” and this is the reason why the Mac just works, It’s not the PC’s fault he has issues…