UltimaGuy writes "Anadtech has an article up comparing the IBM G5 with Intel's CPU. This gives us insight on the strength and weakness of Mac OS X. It also has some thoughts of what they perceive to be OS X's Achilles Heel." From the article: "That is what we'll be doing in this article: we will shed more light on the whole Apple versus x86 PC, IBM G5 versus Intel CPU discussion by showing you what the G5 is capable of when running Linux. This gives us insight on the strength and weakness of Mac OS X, as we compare Linux and Mac OS X on the same machine. The article won't answer all the questions that the first one had unintentionally created. As we told you in the previous article, Apple pointed out that Oracle and Sybase should fare better than MySQL on the Xserve platform. We will postpone the more in-depth database testing (including Oracle) to a later point in time, when we can test the new Apple Intel platform." This is the sequel to another article, reported on in June.

Jon Bell writes "Derrick Hixson has submitted an amazing entry to the MacMod Mod Competition, a 'supercharged' Millennium Falcon: complete with Mac mini and iSight. It even includes front USB ports. His modguide contains complete build instructions, and plenty of pictures."

indie1982 writes "BBC News online is reporting that Creative has been awarded the patent for the interface that many MP3 players use. The patent covers the way files are organised and navigated on a player using a using a hierarchy of menus, a system that Creative's own Nomad jukebox and Apple's iPod range use." Commentary also available at CNet. Reports trend towards an attempt to capitalize on Apple's mistake. From the BBC article: "Creative said the patent applied to its players, as well as some competing products such as the Apple's iPod and iPod mini. The patent covers how files on a music player are organised. Creative was one of the first companies to produce MP3 players but has lost out to Apple which dominates the market. The Creative announcement is the latest salvo in its self-declared war against Apple. "

Mictian writes "Apple Computer is planning to hold a major press conference next week (September 7th) in San Francisco and the rumours say that it will be the unveiling of a new iPod cellphone (NYT). The phone would incorporate the popular iTunes software, be built by Motorola and marketed by Cingular Wireless. The companies have declined to confirm or deny the report, which would fit Apple's past pattern of being secretive to maximise the splash on announcement day."

Corrado writes "The Mercury News is reporting that Apple is still planning to use PowerPC chips well into 2008 for its low end and portable systems. Does this increase the "warm fuzzes" for the Intel move? More information from TheStreet and lots more links from Google News."

markmcb writes "OmniNerd has posted an interesting article about the statistical math behind iTunes. The author makes some interesting observations concerning the same song playing twice in a row during party shuffle play, the impact that star ratings have on playback, and comparisons with plain old random play (star ratings not considered)." From the article: "To test the option's preference for 5-stars, I created a short playlist of six songs: one from each different star rating and a song left un-rated. The songs were from the same genre and artist and were changed to be only one second in duration. After resetting the play count to zero, I hit play and left my desk for the weekend. To satisfy a little more curiosity, I ran the same songs once more on a different weekend without selecting the option to play higher rated songs more often. Monday morning the play counts were as shown in Table 1."

Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the New York Times, the iTunes music store might have to change its 99 cents per song policy or risk losing a huge amount of songs due to recent disputes with record companies, who demand an increase in the cost. From the article: 'If [Mr. Jobs] loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted 99 cents to download any song could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.'"

BabbaBooie writes "According to AppleInsider, on Thursday a San Mateo County judge granted final approval of a settlement in the iPod class action suit that affects as many as 1.3 million iPod owners who may have been victim to poor or defective batteries. Under the settlement, owners of either a first- or second-generation model are entitled to $25 cash or $50 credit at the Apple store. Owners of third-generation iPod models are entitled to a free replacement battery if the battery fails. The deadline for submitting a claim is September 30, 2005. Lawyers say the settlement could cost Apple as much as $15m."

Steve Nixon writes "An unconfirmed report today from Reuters quotes an industry analyst firm iSuppli as saying that Apple plans to buy as much as 40 percent of Samsung's second-half flash memory output. The NAND flash memory cards will be used in a new, 4 GB iPod Mini, which Apple would release in time for the holiday shopping season, the report stated. The current version of the 4 GB mini contains a hard drive. Apple's iPod Shuffle uses flash memory."

turnitover writes "According to eWEEK, "Intel Corp. will port its software developer tools to Mac OS X and will ship its first beta later this year, the chip maker told developers on Tuesday at its first-ever session on Mac OS X at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco." This, as Apple is working on its first Intel-based Macs, due sometime in 2006. Will the promise of the same feature set and the same tools (for Windows, Mac and Linux) mean the future of cross-platform development is here?"

inditek writes "C|Net's News.com reports that Terrasoft Solutions, the vendor that sells and contributes to the development of Yellow Dog Linux has found, and continues to look for, some hardware alternatives based around the PowerPC now that Apple is moving to Intel chips. They say Apple's move makes for a good opportunity and more open space for a chip they think has a lot of life left in it." team99parody also writes "This is great news for customers like the US Navy who rely on Linux-on-PowerPC for important tasks like sonar imaging systems."

psiph writes "'Japan's two major online music distributors said [Thursday] they have agreed to tie up to push the distribution business... The tie-up accord was reached in the wake of the Aug. 4 launch of Apple's Latest News about Apple iTunes in Japan.'"

Viltvodlian Deoderan asks: "So, Spotlight for Mac OS X Tiger is very cool. I can now let my innate ability to disorganize things shine through. However, when using my PowerBook unplugged, it seems that my battery lasts a noticeably less time. A close reading of Ars Technica's description of how spotlight works suggests that this is due to keeping the index file up-to-date on disk. Has anyone else noticed the same thing? Does someone have a better explanation for why my battery seems to drain out, prematurely? Is there some way real-time indexing can be turned off to conserve power?"

RetrogradeMotion writes "The OSx86 Project is reporting that Apple has served a legal notice to MacBidouille, a French news site that posted videos and instructions on running Mac OS X on x86 hardware . You can find an English translation of the MacBidouille notice on the OSx86Project's forums. This is the first known legal action by Apple regarding the hacked version of OS X and calls into doubt the future of other news sites, similar to the OSx86 Project." Slashdot previously covered the story of hacking Mac OS X onto non-Apple hardware and followed up again a few days later.

randomjohndoe writes "IBM has taken the next logical extension of booting Linux from a flash drive. Researchers were recently able to boot Knoppix from an iPod and run an x86 virtual machine in VMware, which provided an easy way to encrypt the whole operating environment. The tests were conducted on a 60GB iPod photo using Knoppix."

Next Generation has a piece up exploring where gaming is going on Max OS X. From the article: "Almost since the introduction of the Mac, Apple users have lamented the lack of game support provided to the platform as compared to its Wintel brethren. Sometimes that lack of support was due to hardware and input devices that weren't competitive with the PC, but the adoption of PC standards like AGP for graphics cards and USB support for 'proper' multi-button mice did away with those obstacles. But the largest reason usually has had to do with the size of the Mac market."

pikester writes "What do you get when you combine 1000 used iBooks being sold for $50 and 1000 people desperately wanting to buy them? You get an iStampede of course! Add into the mix one guy who watches too much wrestling and one gal who re-lived her first Backstreet Boys concert by wetting herself and you'll being looking for video of the whole thing. CNN has some extra details as well." From the article: "Officials opened the gates at 7 a.m., but some already had been waiting for hours in line. When the gates opened, it became a terrifying mob scene. People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A little girl's stroller was crushed in the stampede. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone in a car tried to drive his way through the crowd."

willie3204 was one of several readers who noticed this story about Microsoft cashing in on the iPod Patent that they apparently beat Apple to. Since this song looks to be played to the tune of $10/iPod, I imagine someone will be singing the appeal song.

Baher Al Hakim writes "The Street suggests in a recent article that Apple is about to announce a deal with Google to offer Apple's iTunes Music service through Google's site. The rumored deal would pair the nation's leading online music store with its leading search engine." Update: 08/13 22:00 GMT by T : Truncation untruncated.

nate.oo writes "If you think Apple Computer's Steve Jobs invented the technology behind the Apple iPod, don't bet your 60GB, 15,000-song model on it. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, patent applications that cover much of the technology associated with the iPod were submitted by Microsoft."