Because the health of your MacBook is Apple's concern... lest that class-action lawsuit being organized by frustrated MacBrick owners get the better of Cupertino. The SMC Firmware for Intel MacBooks has been updated to v1.1 to cope with all of those MacBook shutdown problems. Apple recommends that all MacBook owners update their SMCs, even those who've sent their MacBricks to Apple for warranty repair.

Note that your Mac OS X should be 10.4.8 before you run this firmware update. If it isn't, get the OS X upgraded to 10.4.8.

Just like v1.0:

• Quit all other open applications.
• Click Restart in the MacBook SMC Firmware Update window and wait for your computer to restart.
  
• Click OK.

After everything's said and run, the SMC Version should read: 1.4f12.

Now, about that lawsuit. AppleInsider reported back in October that some owners of MacBricks, frustrated that their laptops would randomly shut down, are organizing a class action lawsuit demanding that Apple recall these "defective systems" screwing up their MacBooks - from the screwy logic boards to alarming heat sinks that don't sink enough heat. The problems keep recurring, they said, even after sending their notebooks back to Apple for repair.

Download: [SMC Firmware v1.1 update]

Now you can have LightScribe drives in your Mac. Announced by LaCie earlier today, their drives are now Mac-compatible, along with the release of its LightScribe Labeling software.

LightScribe is the software which allows you to create labels on your burned CDs or DVDs without the need for those printer or sticky label papers. The drive has a "direct-to-disc" label technology that etches it right on the disc itself. You can even make it funky by putting in an artwork or whatever design you may be so inclined to put. The announcement is particularly fantastic, because although there are already some Mac users who have had the LightScribe drives for a while now, it is only now that LaCie's software allowed for it to be Mac-compatible.

The drives are already available for just under US $100, while the software comes free with the drives. The LightScribe labeling software is also released for Linux.

There's a lot of activity going on at Apple these days. By Thanksgiving, there'll be a new line of refreshed Apple notebooks that will come with Intel's Core 2 Duo microprocessors (instead of Apple's own Core Duo), running at speeds of up to 2.33GHz dual-core. Apple has actually slowed down Core Duo MacBook Pro professional notebooks production in lieu of revised and custom-configured models.

Apple has reportedly completed the revisions to its entire notebook product family, including the new 15- and 17-inch professional MacBook Pros, as well as new 13-inch consumer MacBooks last month.

The Mac maker's move was probably inspired by the sales figures of the MacBook. Compared to the MacBook Pro, the demand for the MacBook was far higher on a 2 to 1 ratio. Obviously, the demand for MacBooks has inspired Apple to keep on dishing out new and better versions of it, including the new 13-inch MacBooks. There's still no word, however, whether these 13-inch MacBooks will come equipped with Intel's Core 2 Duo chips or not.

This is a haul that any thief would like to run into. It's a video of the 700+ MacBooks that will be handed out to Kutztown School District High students, totalling to a whopping $980,000. No longer do students have to walk around with 10-year old Dell Laptops, because they'll be strutting with brand new MacBooks, complete with Mac OS X Tiger installed packages. This, in itself, could be modern art, with the amount of MacBooks stacked up in unison, just waiting to be used. It's certainly more interesting than an Elephant that's been painted to resemble wallpaper anyway.

The haul of MacBooks also includes a barrage of nice-looking MacBook bags for the students to carry them around in. Unless you've been inside an Apple warehouse, this is probably the biggest stash of MacBooks you'll ever witness. With a range of MacBooks rolling out across the country, it appears that Apple have re-asserted their position in the American classroom.

Better late than never? AppleCare's finally accepting calls - or complaints - from MacBook owners whose notebooks suddenly shut down without any warning: "If your MacBook is shutting down intermittently, please contact AppleCare for service."

This would be good news for suffering - and complaining - MacBook owners who just want their notebooks running smoothly (or at least without any hiccups). Shutdowns have only been one of a number of complaints that have plagued the notebook and its high-end sister the MacBook Pro, such as the MacStain problem, overheat issues, and weird noises during operation. In some of those cases Apple had also taken some time before formally accepting such complaints into AppleCare.

Some enterprising folks have decided to take matters into their own hands, trying out some do-it-yourself quick fixes. In the case of random shutdowns, a German engineer decided to peek inside his MacBook and found that a heat sink was melting the insulation off some wires. With Apple accepting shutdown complaints though, at least you now have an option that wouldn't void your warranty.

Have you been having problems with your MacBook suddenly shutting down by itself? Well thanks to a certain German engineer who took it upon himself to break down and snoop around his MacBook, we now have a simple DIY solution to this predicament.

According to the German engineer, the cause for these shutdowns is the heat sensor cable found next to the CPU's heat sink. What happens is that when the heat sink expands as you use your laptop, the heat sensor cable touches the sink and melts its insulation. The result? Cable is shortened and MacBook is turned off. And after the heat sink cools down and shrinks, your MacBook can now be turned back on.

What to do: bust open your case and cover the affected areas of the sensor cable with some insulation tape. Now unless the tape also melts, you shouldn't have any problems with sudden shutdowns anymore. A little warning though, doing so may (or may not) void your warranty. Our "Germengineer" isn't sure about this so it's still best to get Apple to fix it for you. But if the sudden shutdown is majorly pissing you off, you can try this simple solution and see if it works.

If you're tempted to switch to Mac because of the new programs, such as Parallels and Boot Camp, you should always first consider the pros and cons (e.g. price, features). If you're already a Mac Pro user, you're probably looking forward to acquiring the Apple Premium, except that it really breaks the wallet. There are, however, some things you can do to relieve you of the pain of hefty purchase. An example is upgrading your RAM -- the do-it-yourself way.

Adam Pash tells us that it's possible to save $300 on a RAM upgrade. Apple, of course, being the manufacturer, can hack the entire thing in a second, but you can do the same, if you follow the steps in the tutorial that you can both view and download here. Pash's trick is to grab a 2 x 1GB sticks of RAM from Newegg that costs around $170. Of course, if you're purchasing the 2GB RAM upgrade from Apple, your MBP would cost around $500.

Download: [MacBook Pro RAM Upgrade Tutorial 1]
Download: [MacPro PDF Alert]

Holy rainbow fruits, Batman! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's... Uhmm... A finely customized, ever-so-versatile, color-changing, glowing Apple logo!

If you are getting pretty iBummed with the Apple iLogo at the iBack of your iLaptop, you can get it iCustomized for CAD 3.99 (~USD 3.60) with iColours' newest project. And that's worldwide shipping too! For that price, you can get a colored filter of your choice. It could be a normal color, or a design, like a rainbow or tiger-skinned logo. For a little more money, you can buy them in packs of three, six, or a dozen. Their website also provides detailed installation instructions (speaking of tutorials, you might also want to check this out) for placing the colored/designed filters onto your iBook, PowerBook, MacBook, or MacBook Pro. It's a very simple concept but altogether quite ingenious.

However, there remains that one question... are you willing to void your iWarranty? Maybe, maybe not. Whatever the case, it still looks iCool. Personalizing your iLaptop was never this iLovely!

Let's face it; not every house in the world has a modem yet. But naturally, I was shocked when I found out that my vacation house in southern France had no phone or Internet connection at all. How the hell was I supposed to fill in those two weeks without surfing the web? Luckily my MacBook was brand new, so I had some stuff to check out, but obviously that wasn't going to last for a long time.

I guess that if you own a MacBook yourself, you've found out that it's loaded with features. And after I watched a bunch of movies I put on it a week before my arrival at the house, I just went searching for stuff I had not discovered yet in the Tiger OS. Well I definitely had fun with Photo Booth, although it's kind of sad to sit there making strange faces of yourself.

Then there's GarageBand. I must say I didn't really know what it was at first (I thought it was a program to make notes compose your classical music or something), so it really surprised me it was the way it was. Well... it didn't take me too long to find out I sucked at that stuff, so I abandoned it more or less.

Oh and the fun I had with the dictionary widget! I looked up some English words I didn't quite understand (I'm Dutch, give me a break), and now I know them. Handy! But that was about the only useful widget as the other ones required a connection. I had the usual fun with Photoshop CS2 but it wasn't quite as fun when you can't take pictures from the web. Also, I hoped 203 songs and a couple of (video) podcasts in iTunes were enough for two weeks. Sadly, I got bored with all of them after a while, so I had to make my own tracks in GarageBand... and they were crap.

Of course I pretty much knew there wasn't a modem in my house, but surely one of the neighbours has a unsecured wireless connection? Okay, there was one, but it was WAP protected. Too bad. After a while I gave up. I went to the pool and to McDonald's.

So kids, always check whether your new house in the mountains has a connection. If not, you better start "borrowing" some movies while you still can.

Thanks to globalization and the unmitigated flow of products across national borders, Apple products such as the MacBook and iPod remain very popular in India. This is largely because locals consider Apple's products as status symbols, showing the rest of society that iPod owners know what's cool and hip outside of their country.

However, due to the usurious taxes and added price from customs imposed on Apple's products in the country, few people buy their iPods legally, and instead resort to what they call the "gray market." The gray market is where tons of smuggled iPods and MacBooks from Singapore, Dubai, and Malaysia are being sold in India.

Om Gani, a stall-owner in Burma Bazaar, Chennai's most notorious illegal market in India, says "You can't buy Apple in India. I have to fly out of the country every month to get more." The 30GB video iPod reportedly sells for $280 in the gray market, which is $20 cheaper than the amount they sell it for at Best Buy in US. BUT, guess how much the 30GB iPod sells in authorized retail shops in India? A whopping $440.

If this is the case, the "logical" thing for many buyers is to go where you can get the product at a cheaper price. As for Apple, they don't have any cause to complain or force retailers to stay legal because the price added to their products go to the Indian government and not to them. And well, legit or not, this still means more profit for Apple.

Buying your Apple products on the gray market has its dangers nonetheless; there's no warranty of any sort. There's always the danger of getting counterfeit parts and iPod units that have barely survived the rough handling of smugglers. We know it's always better and safer to buy our stuff the legal way. But in the case of India and the gray market, could you really blame the locals who just want their own iPods?