Apple released a new batch of ads for the new Macs, with John Hodgman of "The Daily Show" and McSweeney's representing the stuffy, nerdy Windows PC, and Justin Long of Dodgeball representing the... well, we guess every bit as nerdy but maybe they were going for younger and slightly less stuffy Macintosh. In his FatBits blog on Ars Technica, John Siracusa gives his take on the new ads, one with which we agree. It's......

Seems like all the cool stuff happens when we're out of town. We can't leave San Francisco for a couple of weeks without Hell freezing over and Apple releasing a way to run Windows on Intel-based Macs. We have to admit to some relief when we heard the neighbor's dog going ballistic on the mailman this morning, and overheard some hipsters making fun of The Marina this afternoon — we were starting to worry......

Tech news you should be interested in this week: Microsoft announced on Tuesday that its Vista operating system won't be released until January of next year (link from CNet news.com). Office 2007 is also delayed to come out in tandem with the new OS. PC manufacturer Dell bought gamer-targeted manufacturer Alienware (link from Ars Technica). Alienware will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and at least at the moment, Dell continues to sell......

If there's one thing we love more than passing along days-old links to non-stories, it's laughing and pointing at people on the internets getting all riled up at perceived assaults on their freedom of expression. The story is from the Infinite Loop blog on Ars Technica, complete with dramatic clip art. The human rights violation in question concerns a Dutch MacBook Pro owner who'd posted a Flickr photoset with pictures of his melted MagSafe......

This week Microsoft and Intel finally revealed the Origami, their "Ultra-Mobile PC" platform. Reaction from most of the blogs and news sites has been one of disappointment — there were a lot of teasers and speculation on what the device would end up being, but it turns out it's just a tablet PC that's smaller than a laptop but bigger than a PDA. Microsoft's goals for the platform are to be able to run......

Here in the SFist Tech Labs, we're committed to two things: science, and our readers. So we'd never let anything like the debilitating headache we've been going through for the past 18 hours or so keep us from bringing you the links to tech news you deserve. While we read the symptoms on BBC's health page, you can follow along. Throbbing Pain Ars Technica is reporting on a new California bill that would ban......

More takes on the launch of Google.cn: the company's response on the Official Google Blog, and protests from the Students for a Free Tibet Blog. Elinor Mills of CNet News.com posted her roundup on her CNet blog. Ars Technica covers a few other Google-related stories this week: Ken Fisher gives his review of Google Video, his disappointment with the service, and what he thinks is the company's reasoning for introducing it early. Nate Anderson......

We've been using our research time to ruminate on the growing importance of public perception of technology companies. As the most closely-watched technology company in the Bay Area, Google is getting criticism for supposedly not living up to its philosophy of "You can make money without doing evil". The issue now is Google's decision to censor search results on its Chinese site. In an interview with Reuters (vectored via CNet news.com), Sergey Brin acknowledges......

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Yahoo CFO Susan Decker said that Google has the dominating market share in Internet search, and it's no longer Yahoo's goal to be number 1 in the field. Last week, after Yahoo's share price dropped when the company's profits failed to reach analyst's expectations, Chairman Terry Semel conceded in an interview with SFGate, "Frankly, Google has done a better job than us." Bloggers are talking about Decker's comments......

This week saw contention between Google and the US Department of Justice, as the Bush Administration asked a federal judge to force Google to comply with a subpoena for search records. (Link to CNET News.com; they've also aggregated their complete coverage of the story). The records are intended to be used to support the validity of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. AOL, MSN, and Yahoo were also asked to turn over records, and......