Strudelkugel writes "CNN is reporting that Apple's ex-CFO warned Steve Jobs about backdating options. From the article: 'Apple's former finance chief Fred Anderson blamed Apple CEO Steve Jobs for a 2001 stock option grant that was backdated, according to a statement from Anderson's lawyer released Tuesday. The statement was released by Anderson's lawyer, Jerome Roth, after Anderson settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission related to Apple's stock option plan without admitting or denying any wrongdoing.' This is serious business. It is quite possible that the SEC could someday require Jobs to resign from Apple."

narramissic writes "AT&T is reportedly preparing to market the iPhone to business users and is scurrying to ensure that its backend enterprise billing and support systems will accommodate the device when it ships. Analysts are baffled by the move. In addition to running an OS X-based operating system, which enterprises may be reluctant to adopt, the iPhone is also expected to have a number of shortcomings for business users, including not having a removable battery and not having buttons, which would make it difficult to dial while driving says Gartner's Ken Dulaney. Avi Greengart, principal analyst for mobile devices at Current Analysis, also thinks the iPhone won't be a good option for enterprise customers because enterprises won't be able to write applications for the phone."

rizzo320 writes "AppleInsider is reporting that an Illinois-based company and its Nevada partner have filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging that Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' infringes an interface patent relating to the OS's nearly universal use of tabs. The suit was filed in the patent troll's and forum shopper's favorite venue: Marshall, TX. The patent in question is 5072412, which was originally issued to Xerox in 1987, but is now owned or licensed to IP Innovation LLC and its parent Technology Licensing Corporation. 'Category dividers triggered by Spotlight searches, as well as page tabs in the Safari web browser, bear the closest similarity to the now 20-year-old description' of the patent, according to the article. IP Innovation is requesting damages in excess of $20 million and an injunction against future sales and distribution of Mac OS X 10.4. Software patent reform can't come soon enough!"

Question Guy writes "Apple QuickTime is involved in a troubling problem that doesn't seem to be addressed by any of the major software and hardware manufacturers involved. On Toshiba machines, such as the Protege Tablet M400s, with Windows Vista installed, opening a locally stored QuickTime .MOV causes instant bluescreen. All other video functions seem to be working in other video playback types — even streaming .MOVs work — and there is little to no 'buzz' on the Net that might push any of the parties to investigate or to play nice together (Microsoft for Vista, Intel for the GMA945 chipset, Toshiba for their custom tablet software, Apple for QuickTime). Help, anyone?"

EMB Numbers writes "Shane Macaulay just won a MacBook as a prize for successfully hacking OS X at CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, BC. The hack was based on a Safari vulnerability found by Dai Zovi and written in about 9 hours. CanSecWest organizers actually had to relax the contest rules to make the hack possible, because initially nobody at the event could breach the computers under the original restrictions. 'Dai Zovi plans to apply for a $10,000 bug bounty TippingPoint announced on Thursday if a previously unknown Apple bug was used. "Shane can have the laptop, I want the money," Dai Zovi said in a telephone interview from New York. TippingPoint runs the Zero Day Initiative bug bounty program.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A Microsoft exec has turned attack dog, lashing out at Apple's iPhone by saying the device isn't good for business. Why? Because the iPhone is 'a closed device that you cannot install applications on.' Specifically, he's talking about Microsoft Office. 'While the entry of the iPhone (with its cut-down version of Mac OS X) into this market offers new options for consumers, Sorenson believes user familiarity with the Windows Mobile interface — and the ease with which companies can buy and develop applications for the platform — will sustain its increasing popularity and help keep the iPhone out of the lucrative corporate market.'"

TheCybernator writes "Apple today released software updates to plug more than two dozen security holes in its Mac OS X operating system and other software. The free patches are available via the Mac's built-in Software Update feature or directly from Apple's Web site. All told, today's batch fixes some 25 distinct security vulnerabilities, including a dangerous flaw present in the AirPort wireless devices built into a number of Apple computers, including the eMac, the iBook, iMac, Powerbook G3 and G4, and the Power Mac G4. Apple said computers with its AirPort Extreme wireless cards are not affected. Earlier this month, Apple released a software update to fix a vulnerability in its wireless router, the AirPort Extreme Base Station. That update and instructions on how to apply it are available at the link."

belsin_gordon writes "CNET rounds up what we're going to get from the next iPod and where Apple is heading as a company and as a business juggernaut. [They have the] 100GB widescreen video iPods, Wi-Fi-enabled iPods capable of on-the-fly movie downloads over the air, unlimited downloads from iTunes for a flat fee and the UK finally getting its content-hungry hands on movie downloads. Apple has dropped the 'Computer' from its company name, and is making significant advances into the media-distribution business. It's bringing video to everyone everywhere with iTunes movies and now Apple TV, and the rumours and speculation we've discussed promote the theory that Apple is setting itself up as a major player in the media-distribution industry."

ktwdallas writes "Mathew Ingram from Canada's Globe and Mail writes that Microsoft will require at least the $299 Business version of Vista or higher if installing on a Mac with virtualization. Running the cheaper Basic or Premium versions would be a violation of their user agreement. According to the article, Microsoft's reasoning is 'because of security issues with virtualization technology'. Sounds suspiciously like a 'Mac penalty' cost that Microsoft is trying to justify."

Ernest DeFarge writes "Apple recently announced that they've pulled several key programmers from the OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and assigned them to the iPhone in order to get it done on time. In doing so, they delayed Leopard for 4 months. Does that mean that the iPhone is more important to Apple than Mac OS? Or is it just capitalizing on the current state of Apple's fanbase?"

UnknowingFool writes "Apple announced today that it will be adding MGM movies to its movie catalog. With Apple already selling Disney and Paramount movies, how long will it be before the other studios work out a deal with Apple?"

SuperMog2002 writes "Apple Insider has the sad news that Mac OS X Leopard has been delayed until October. Apparantly software engineers and QA had to be reassigned to the iPhone in order to get it out on time, costing Leopard its release at WWDC. For now the original press release from Apple can be found on the 'Hot News' part of their site, though Apple did not provide a permanent link to the story. 'While Leopard's features will be complete by June, the Cupertino-based company said it cannot deliver the quality release expected by its customers within that time. Apple now plans to show its developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship the software in October.'"

macpulse asks: "What is the best way to image and deploy dual-boot Intel Macintosh desktops in an Educational environment? Our organization is getting ready to purchase dozens of new Intel Macs for each campus and we're not sure how to proceed. With Windows XP and Dell, we've simply used Symantec's Enterprise Ghost to deploy our images. Playing with the test Intel Macs we have, we are unable to get Ghost to work with the Mac. I've also played with Bombich's NetRestore product (which is FOSS!) but without much success. I'm curious how my fellow readers have resolved this issue. Thanks!"

prelelat writes "I find it somewhat hard to believe but this story over at PC world, indicates that the iPod has sold over 100 million units. It also asks how many are broken and replaced which makes me believe the number may be more accurate."

lpangelrob writes "Peter Svensson of the Associated Press reviews the Apple TV, and comes away less than impressed.While the Apple TV gets solid marks for "a very iPod-like interface, commendably clear and easy to use", the Apple TV experience falls apart on an HD television. The reviewer notes that "videos from Apple's online iTunes store look horrible on an HDTV set. The movies and TV shows have the same nominal resolution as DVDs, but look much blurrier, approaching the look of standard-definition broadcast TV.'"

Via a Wired Blog, an anonymous reader wrote with a link to a post on the Geek Technique website. There, post author Mark Hoekstra details how to replace an iPod's HDD with flash memory. It's not an inexpensive procedure, as 16 Gigs of flash memory is still a mite expensive, and the post is not a 'how-to'. Just the same, the project took painstaking work and is well worth recognizing. "I guess I can say I found ways of eliminating almost every hard drive out of almost every hard drive based iPod thereby eliminating all moving parts. The only one left is the iPod video which would only need a slightly different adapter. But next to that I've got a gut feeling that one's being upgraded to flash memory by Apple themselves any time soon."

mikesd81 writes "Over at C|Net there is an article about Michigan spending $38 million to distribute an iPod to every kid, for learning purposes. From the article: 'On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player.' The plan included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services to pay for it, among other things, to raise funds. If you recall, Duke University tried something like this with mixed results. How financially strained will Michigan residents feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod?"

An anonymous reader wrote with a link to a Wired story about a fun play-along-at-home project: Turning Apple TV into a very tiny workable computer. "Apple TV is dead, long live the Mac Nano. Sort of. Just two weeks after Apple released its streaming media box to the public, hackers successfully installed OS X, Apple's desktop operating system, on the $300 device, making it the cheapest PC Cupertino has ever sold. 'The breakthrough is done, OS X runs on Apple TV!' wrote Semthex, the anonymous hacker responsible for the mod, at his website. 'Now we got (the) low-budget Mac we ever wanted.'"

PetManimal writes "Despite all of the positive buzz about the Mac operating system and the 'halo effect' of iPod sales, Mac OS X market share actually dropped last month, reports Computerworld: 'The share of PowerPC-based Macs fell ... from 4.29% in February to 3.94% in March. That dip was not fully offset by an increase in Intel-based Mac hardware, leading to a overall net decline in Mac share of 0.3%, to 6.08% in March.' Meanwhile, Vista is rising, the article says, with just over 2% of computers connected to the Internet using the new Windows OS. The figures are from a company called Net Applications, which collects its data from the browsers of visitors to its network of 40,000+ Web sites."

An anonymous reader writes "Although antivirus companies will probably create a hype saying that iPods are prone to infections, a virus called 'Podloso' is a newly found virus that is just a proof of concept code that can infect iPods running Linux. Once launched, the virus scans the device's hard disk and infects all executable .elf format files. Any attempt to launch these files will cause the virus to display a message on the screen which says, 'You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus.'"