A common complaint that I heard earlier this week at the CITE conference in San Francisco was that Apple wasn’t a “real” enterprise vendor. IT professionals have whined and moaned about the fact that Apple doesn’t behave like most enterprise vendors for years (as a long time Mac and Apple IT professional myself, I’ve probably muttered under my breath about Apple’s approach to the enterprise many more times than most of the CITE attendees). What’s changed, however, is that CIOs and other IT leaders can no longer simply say “no” anytime Apple or an Apple product is mentioned.

This week, Apple even reiterated the point by dropping Apple Configurator, a completely new free tool for managing iOS devices in business. It’s a tool that offers new workflows when it comes to how businesses work with iPads (and to a lesser extent iPhones) and Apple released without telling its mobile management partners or its enterprise customers.

To all those IT folks bitching and complaining that Apple doesn’t publish 18-month roadmaps and doesn’t reach out to every enterprise months in advance of a product upgrade or cancelation, I have to say this: deal with it.

Who is this muttonchopped Steve Jobs and crime-fighting cyborg partner, The Amazing Mac Man? More importantly, where can I get one of those Apple-branded codpieces?!?

[via MIC Gadget]

Nuff said. [via Science Dump]

The folks at Canlys this morning are doing what analysts are fond of: playing the ‘if’ game. If iPads were included in the same category as computers, Apple might soon overtake HP as the world’s largest PC maker — particularly if the Cupertino, Calif. company launches the iPad 3, anticipated by many to be a 2012 release. Canalys, which does count tablets as PCs, expects Apple to pass HP before mid-2012.

A couple weeks ago, we posted about TwelveSix’s PlugBug, a cute little attachment that plugs into your standard MacBook MagSafe charger and gives it a 10W USB port, perfect for charging your MacBook and iPad simultaneously.

The PlugBug’s an ingenious little idea, and I’m reviewing one now. However, PlugBug’s days might be numbered: a new patent says that Apple is working on a universal power adapter that can charge MacBook Pros, iPhones and iPads, all at the same time.

We haven’t even seen the first retina display iPad yet, but just as Apple’s been baking double-sized assets for an iPad HD into iOS since iOS 4, OS X Lion lays down some groundwork for the first Retina Display iMacs and MacBooks.

Here’s a little known fact about the OS X Lion installer — it self-destructs after it completes the OS X Lion installation and if you are on a limited or capped ISP data plan that sucks. Especially if you plan on upgrading more than one Mac in your home or office. Luckily, you don’t need to download the OS X Lion installer on each computer and waste precious data or time.

You only need to download it once if you follow this quick and easy tip before installing OS X Lion the first time.

Do you need antivirus or antimalware software on your Mac? Although Apple’s sales staff are quick to hype up the relative security of a Mac compared to a Windows PC, internally, they aren’t so confident. According to an Apple Store Genius speaking to Ars Technica, “Mac Defender has changed everything.”

AirPlay may have been a little bit of a disappointment upon arrival, but TUAW’s Erica Sadun just keeps on managing to make it better. Just a week after her release of AirPlayer, an app that tricks AirPlay into thinking your Mac’s an AppleTV, comes her brand new tool, called AirFlick… and it’s everything that AirPlay should have been out of the box.

What does AirFlick do? It allows you to stream video content from your Mac to your AppleTV: AVIs, MP4s, even streaming video files on the Internet. You name it! “It” being non-Flash video.

Last week, we reported that Apple’s new MacBook Airs were shipping without Adobe Flash preinstalled… a radical departure from the norm for Apple, which has been bundling Flash with OS X (and OS 9 before it) as the default for seemingly ages. Was it a fluke, or is this Apple’s new policy?

Nope, not a fluke, according to Apple, who say that Adobe Flash will not come preinstalled on any of their machines in the future.