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.'"

stivi writes "BusinessWeek has up an article about a war: a standards war in the online music business. Apple's recent deal with EMI to sell DRM-free songs from the publisher's catalog on iTunes may clinch the iPod's AAC format as the industry standard. The article talks about possible reasons why AAC might marginalize WMA, as well as deals with some of the implications of drm-free aac-standardized industry. 'Online music stores, like Napster, Yahoo Music, URGE, and all the others that sell WMA songs will be forced to consider jumping into the DRM-free AAC camp, and thus become iPod compatible, and in so doing become competitors of iTunes. Apple will be fine with this, because in its range of priorities, anything that sells more iPods can only be a good thing. With time, practically all music stores will be selling iPod-compatible songs. This will be considered a Richter 10 event at Microsoft.'"

ivan1024 writes "The Apple website is announcing the availability of an 8-core Mac Pro. The machine will ship with two 3.0 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300 processors. Older models with the Dual-Core chips remain available. Base model with two 3.0 GHz Quad-Core Xeon processors start at $3997, (albeit with unacceptably minimal RAM or HD space; fully spec'd with dual 30" monitors and tons o' RAM/HD still over $10K... bummer)"

Julio Ojeda-Zapata writes "Google on Tuesday will release a Mac version of Google Desktop. This software, like the PC version, indexes the content of a hard drive and serves it up on familiar Google-style search-result Web pages (or via a its own drop-down results list, if you prefer). But Google Desktop for the Mac is streamlined compared to the busy, gadget-y Windows version, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The focus is squarely on search — including local indexing of an online Gmail account of your choice. It will also index your iDisk."

Macthorpe writes "ABC News is reporting that the EU has started an antitrust probe into the way that Apple sells music on iTunes. As you can only purchase from the store of the country where your credit or debit card is registered, the price differences and availability differences between iTunes stores for different EU countries constitute a violation of EU competition laws which forbid territorial sales restrictions.'Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said Monday the company wanted to operate a single store for all of Europe, but music labels and publishers said there were limits to the rights that could they could grant to Apple. "We don't believe Apple did anything to violate EU law," he said. "We will continue to work with the EU to resolve this matter."'"

Fjan11 writes "Steve Jobs just announced that starting next month on you can buy higher quality 256Kbps AAC encoded DRM-free versions of iTunes songs for $1.29. Upgrades to songs you've already bought will be available at the $0.30 price difference. Currently EMI is the only publisher participating, accounting for about 20% of the songs available." There's also reports from Reuters and ABC News. The deal excludes the Beatles. You can also read the official press release from Apple if you still think this a late joke; this story confirms earlier speculation.

An anonymous reader writes "AppleTVhacks published a full howto install guide with 12 easy steps to turn your AppleTV into a full blown OSX workstation. With a processor emulation, hacker Semthex of hackint0sh.org, managed to get full blown OSX working on a AppleTV. The kernel for this hack is freely available under APSL and opens the legal way to a really cheap Mac Nano. With 300$ difference to the Mac Mini, this is becoming a fairly interesting deal." April Fool's, btw.

jcatcw writes "Computerworld's Scot Finnie says that Microsoft should be afraid because Apple has gotten smarter about how it competes. He says that it's the Parallels Desktop software that has been truly transformational for the Mac. Finnie did a simple three-month trial of the Mac last in the fall and realized four months later that he wasn't going back. Since then he's received hundreds of messages from readers who've also made the switch. 'In the end, this is about perception. It isn't about Apple's market share or even its quarterly sales numbers. (Apple's notebook computer sales for the fourth quarter were 4.1% of all portable computer sales, according to DisplaySearch.) What this is about is that Apple is reaching the right people with its product, winning new converts, Windows user by Windows user -- and creating buzz. How do you measure buzz? You don't. It's something that experienced people in this industry can just feel. And that's the condition Microsoft should fear. Because buzz can turn into something much harder to combat than sheer numbers.'"