Nick Baum wrote yesterday in a Google Groups post, "The extensions team has been working hard to get BrowserActions ready, and they’re already working great on Windows and Linux.  We’ve noticed that many of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI.  We’d like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well!"

Then Baum got to the Mac-related heart of the matter, continuing, "Why make the switch now?  The earlier you switch, the more time you will have to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December.  We realize this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that.  If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions, we’ll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!"

And since it took Google about three months to remove the beta tag from the first version of Chrome, that may mean that a finalized Chrome for Mac will available before February.

This isn’t a firm timeline, of course, but it at least looks almost certain that Google is going to ramp up its efforts.  Hat tip goes to Stephen Shankland.

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The new version, Skype 2.8, allows callers on Skype to share what is on their screen by calling another Skype users and showing all or part of their screen to the other person.

"Screen sharing is all about bringing people closer together and having conversations around what people want to share," said Neil Stevens, Head of Consumer for Skype.

"I can share the latest video of my daughters with my mother who lives overseas, all while having a conversation over Skype. With my colleagues, Skype’s screen sharing adds to our productivity. I can share desktop presentations and show demos while talking over Skype."

For Mac users who have the latest Skype software, they can use a new feature called Skype Access, which offers pay as you go access to WiFi hotspots.

To use Skype’s screen sharing feature, you can call another Skype user and click on "Share Your Screen in the conversations window’s IM toolbar (using Windows) or the "Share Screen" (using a Mac).
 

Globally, Apple sold 856,000 desktops during the quarter, and 1.4 million notebooks-year-to-year increases of 37 percent and 61 percent respectively.  The total of 2.29 million Macs was just below the record 2.32 million sold in the last three months of 2007

"Totaling its Americas revenue with that of its retail stores, more than 80% of which are in the U.S., revenue increased 43% year-to-year, and units sold increased [by] 52.5%," Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research told ComputerWorld.

"TBR believes Apple has established itself as a real and often better choice for consumer purchasers of higher-end PCs."

Apple posted earnings of $1.05 billion, up from $770 million a year ago, on revenues of $7.51 billion, up from $5.26 billion in 2007. Its profit margin was 32.9 percent, down from 35.1 percent from the same quarter in 2007.

"The effect of Apple’s transition to the Intel platform, which allows Macs to run Windows, combined with the disappointment in Microsoft’s Vista operating system, has given Apple enormous momentum in the U.S. market," Gottheil said.