While others take a shotgun approach to product design in hopes some will succeed, Apple knows how to focus on essentials.

99: Growing Internet presence - 01: BeOS on a Power Mac - 02: TiBook value: New vs. old - Right to link threatened - Future of PowerPC - 03: Macs cheaper than PCs? - Conversions Plus - 04: The lonely Mac support guy - 07: Top Mac user mistakes - 08: A very Pismo Christmas - Online answers for ailing computers

The results are in. And in its 2009 Wireless Consumer Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study, J.D. Power and Associates reports that “Apple ranks highest among smartphone manufacturers with a score of 791 on a 1,000-point scale, performing particularly well in ease of operation, operating system, features and physical design.”

Most external Western Digital hard drives can’t boot PowerPC Macs, and WD says none of its external drives should be used to boot a computer.

99: Outcast - 02: eMac - PowerBook G4/800 - 03: Sharing dialup Internet - 04: Crossing the platform divide - 05: Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ - Tiger Direct sues Apple - iPod drives the digital revolution - 08: 2008 iMac value equation - Mac’s ‘troubling low’ market share - Refreshingly different Clamshell iBook - Compleat Guide to Titanium PowerBooks

Replacing the hard drive in a Pismo PowerBook or polycarbonate MacBook is easy. But those iBooks are another thing entirely.

Smule calls their latest iPhone app “an instrument, a game, and a huge global social experience.” Most App Store reviewers simply call it “addictive.” And give it 5 stars. Like Ocarina, Leaf Trombone lets you turn iPhone or iPod touch into a musical instrument; this time, a trombone. But Leaf Trombone also lets you play for — and get instant reviews from — a global audience of fellow Leaf Trombone players. Ready to take the world stage?

At Doylestown Hospital, doctors don’t have to carry charts anymore. Instead, they carry an iPhone and enjoy secure, 24/7 access to patient records, including vital signs, medications, lab results, allergies, nurses’ notes, and therapy results. When with a patient, they can tap the iPhone screen, launch a program like Epocrates, and use it to help explain diseases, interpret lab results, or check on drug interactions.

Most Macs don’t need matched memory modules and seem to run just fine with mismatched brands and capacities, but matching modules may be a bit faster.

03: One user’s Mac journey - Norton warnings - 04: Turning a profit with low-end Macs - 05: $15 device turns iPod into a radio station - 06: 17″ MacBook Pro a great value - World gone Apple - 08: Penryn iMac - Opera 9.5 beta - Psystar and dreams of a Mac ‘for the rest of us’