taskforce writes "Sun Microsystems Co-Founder Bill Joy claims that Apple nearly moved to Sun's SPARC chips instead of IBM's PPC platform, back in the mid-1990s. From the article: "We got very close to having Apple use Sparc. That almost happened," Joy said at a panel discussion featuring reminiscences by Sun's four cofounders at the Computer History Museum. An account of his entire presentation can be found on Cnet."

BlueDjinn writes to tell us that it appears a great deal of speculation over Disney's buyout of Pixar Animation Studios is in fact true. From the article: "[Pixar] is set to meet tomorrow to approve the company's $7bn (£3.9bn) takeover by Disney. The all-share deal will make Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, around $3.5bn and the single largest shareholder in Disney. Jobs created Pixar in 1986 when he paid $10m for the computer animations division of Lucasfilm, owned by Star Wars creator George Lucas."

An anonymous reader writes "Chris Seibold over at Apple Matters, has written up an interesting analysis on Steve Jobs' suggestion that Microsoft make their own mp3 player. He argues that it is more bait than business plan, a deft move by Steve Jobs to lure Microsoft into a can't-win war. The key, according to the article, is the licensing of FairPlay." From the article: "The folks who stick with Microsoft get to fight over, roughly, twenty percent of the market. The folks that go with Apple would be aligning themselves with what has become the industry standard. The players that license FairPlay would have access to the iTunes store, backwards compatibility with the songs consumers have already purchased, and a chance to compete on a perfectly level playing field with the iPod. It doesn't take a Stanford MBA to deduce that the potential rewards of opting to use FairPlay far outstrip the rewards of going with PlaysForSure."

mikeisme77 writes "According to the Washington Post, Pixar Studios is in discussions with Disney for a possible merger/buy out. Disney would own Pixar in exchange for $6.7 billion worth of stock in the Walt Disney Corp. Speculation has also arisen that such a deal may lead to Steve Jobs earning a position on Disney's board of directors. He would likely become Disney's largest individual share holder. Further speculation sees Jobs using his new found power to leverage Disney into releasing more content to the iTunes media service." Details also available from the Time Magazine site. We touched on this issue near the end of last year as well.

Barry Norton writes "Steve Jobs, at the MacWorld tradeshow, boasted: 'the new iMac [with] Intel processor is two to three times faster than the iMac G5.' MacWorld (the publication) has been putting the iMacs through their paces. The results are a good deal less impressive than Steve's boast, showing an average performance increase of 10 to 25 per cent while performing a series of everyday tasks with software specially designed for the new systems." Ars Technica had another perspective on the new systems earlier this week.

Barry Norton writes "VNUNet reports that the Photocasting feature in Apple's iPhoto application violates core XML and RSS standards. Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong. Dave Winer, essentially the creator of RSS, says, 'It's pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, there are elements that are not in RSS that aren't in a namespace.'"

SenseOfHumor writes "A Business Week article says that it costs Apple $898 for an Intel iMac before loading it with software and packaging. From the article: 'But for Apple, the switch to Intel chips is less about saving money in the short term, and more about hitching its wagon to Intel's longer-term product road maps, particularly in the area of notebooks. IBM's chips are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat, and therefore not suitable to notebook computers.'"

grandgator writes "TV Week reports on NBC's claims that iTunes downloads are boosting ratings for their primetime shows. Citing one example 'NBC's "The Office" delivered a 5.1-its highest ratings ever-last Thursday among adults 18 to 49, a bump the network credits in large part to the show's popularity as an iPod download. Such a connection between podcast success and broadcast ratings success is particularly significant because the NBC data is among the first available evidence of what network executives have been gambling on when striking their new media deals-that the new video platforms are additive because they provide more entry points into a show for consumers.'"

minimunchkin writes "BBC Correspondent Bill Thompson responds to the flaming he received for an article on the vulnerabilities in Mac security. He knows that there are no Mac OS X viruses in the wild, and he doesn't believe there ever will be." From the article: "However the wider point, that there are exploitable vulnerabilities and sometimes Apple puts them there, remains. Even if I'm careful to apply updates when they are made available, some people might not and their systems could be compromised. And there is always a gap between the discovery of an issue and an available fix, a gap which could be exploited. "

Milton Waddams writes "Ars kick off what I'm sure will be a torrent of reviews of the of the new Intel iMac. Overall it looks like it's a bit faster than the iMac G5 and a bit slower than the PowerMac G5 dual core. I'm sure it will surprise many slashdotters to find out that Jobs' statements about the new iMac being twice as fast as the iMac G5 as being slightly over optimistic. AND it doesn't run Windows...yet..." I'm still waiting for the most important benchmark: frames per second in molten core combat.

mister_tim writes "While we'll have to wait till someone actually tries it to get absolute confirmation, news coming from Intel in Australia, reported here by Dan Warne in the Australian Personal Computer magazine, is that the new Intel-based Macs may be able to load and boot Windows XP after all. Several of the early stories after the announcement of the MacBook Pro and the Intel-based iMac assumed that Windows XP would not boot on Intel Macs, since XP doesn't support EFI (replacing BIOS in the new Macs), and Apple's statement that they wouldn't prevent the use of XP on Apple hardware didn't really give people much assurance either way. This statement from Intel implies that there is really no issue."

wild_berry writes "Found, via Ars Technica's Apple journal, Infinite Loop, a Japanese site disassembling Intel Core Duo iMac. Clint, from the Ars blog, points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's. Please use the - cached pages."

wild_berry writes "Bill Thompson, one of the BBC's technology commentators and presenter of Go Digital on the BBC World Service, expresses his concerns that Mac users assume their safety in the face of trojans, worms, keyloggers and other malware. As a Mac user he is most concerned about the lack of herd immunity that is needed to stop a few infections becoming an epidemic, fully explained in his column week for the BBC technology site. Is he right, and what actual products exist for OS X that would protect against infections?"

rgraham writes "Intel has released a number of development tools for OSX, including a C++ and Fortran compiler. I for one would be interested to see some benchmarks of code compiled using these tools and Apple's own Xcode."

RetrogradeMotion writes "The OSx86 Project is reporting on a hidden message to hackers in Apple's new MacBook Pro. The new Intel-based OS X contains a file named 'Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext' and is accompanied by the message, 'The purpose of this Apple software is to protect Apple copyrighted materials from unauthorized copying and use.' The file is not present in either the PowerPC version of OS X or the Intel version shipped to developers last year. While Apple has sent messages to hackers before, is this a tounge-in-cheek introduction to the anticipated (and hated) Trusted Platform Module? Is locking down OS X a strategic necessity or a missed opportunity?" Obviously a big maybe here, but a good story just the same.

Seb Payne writes "At the WWNC 2006, Adam Tow has reported that Einstein, the NewtonOS emulator is now working on a Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA, showing future for our favourite green friend. Although it is not production quality, could this bring a future to the Newton platform?"

If you were worried about your Azeroth fix on the new Intel Macs, worry not. Ars Technica reports that World of Warcraft is officially supported on Apple's newest toys. From the article: "What Blizzard did today was pop the cherry on Mac gaming with Intel inside Azeroth. Apple was cool enough to provide a prototype iMac, and Blizzard was cool enough to have been working overtime on the Intel version of Warcraft. WoW for Intel will be publicly available in about three weeks--for free! As if people wouldn't take a Krol Blade to their non-mousing arm in payment for a real FSB for 3D."

LiMikeTnux wrote to mention a CNN article giving details about the five year agreement now in place between Microsoft and Apple to keep Office alive on the Mac platform. From the article: "Though Apple clearly benefits from having the widely-used Office software available to its users, it may seem less obvious what Microsoft stands to gain from continuing its relationship. But according to Greg DeMichillie, a senior analyst with Directions on Microsoft, an independent consulting and analysis firm focusing specifically on Microsoft, the business is still a profitable one for Microsoft. While it's not a huge part of Microsoft's business, given the company's sheer scale, 'Apple's 3 to 4 percent market share doesn't hurt them either,' DeMichillie said. 'Also, to have them be seen going out of their way to hurt a competing operating system is not really helpful from an anti-trust perspective.'"

bonch writes "Nine years after Michael Dell said he'd shut down Apple and give the money to the shareholders, Apple has passed Dell in market value, at $72,132,428,843 compared to Dell's $71,970,702,760. Analysts expect Apple to continue to outperform competitors, citing 2006 as 'poised to be the year of both iPod growth and, more importantly, Mac market share gains,' with earnings growing more than 35%. I should have bought stock two years ago!" We talked about the approach of this moment back in November of last year.

An anonymous reader writes "Remember last year when Microsoft head Steve Ballmer said iPod owners were music thieves and their iPods were full of stolen music? It turns out they're actually less likely to download music using filesharing software than owners of other MP3 players. A lot less likely." From the article: "A survey of US and UK music buyers reveals that although 25 per cent of people admit to downloading music from file-sharing services, only seven per cent of iPod owners do so. Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."