bacterial_pus writes "First the music industry wanted more money, by changing Apple's 99 cents per song policy. Now one exec is threatening to pull the plug on Apple if Steve Jobs doesn't change the iTunes Music Store pricing." From the article: "Nash's comments echoes those made last week by Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman, who called for Apple to adopt variable pricing and share out revenues from iPod sales. The record companies' position is based on the dubious argument that digital downloads sell iPods. In fact all the evidence points to the opposite: that iPod sales have driven demand for downloads. The vast majority of digital music sales are made by iPod owners. Cut off Apple and the labels digital sales will slump." More recently Jobs resisted their pressure, and the execs snarked back. Looks like they're getting more serious.

Sam Wil writes "Apple has acknowledged a flaw in the iPod nano screen that results in cracking, and attributes it to poor vendor quality. The defect affects less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all the nanos that have shipped so far. Apple will replace the screen of affected units for free." From the article: "However, the representative said that the screen-cracking issue is separate from reports that the slim new music player is more easily scratched than prior models. Complaints about both issues surfaced shortly after Apple introduced the flash memory-based Nano earlier this month. 'A few vocal customers are saying their Nano is more susceptible to scratching than prior iPods,' the Apple representative said. Apple said the Nano is made of the same polycarbonate plastic as the fourth-generation iPod and said it does not believe the scratching problem is widespread." You may recall we had a lively discussion about the screen-scratch flaw a short while back.

karvind writes "BBC is running an interesting scoop on first transistor radio which has fair resemblance to iPod mini. The Regency TR-1 transistor radio, made in 1954, had a decent claim to be a genuine piece of innovation, however. It was, by popular agreement, the world's first commercially sold transistor pocket radio. Incidently technology watcher John Ousby realised the modern day parallels and matched photos of the transistor with photos of the iPod mini. The similarity between the two has 'created quite a stir' particularly in the Mac community."

wellington map writes "TheRegister reports iPod nano users have discovered that it is unbelievably easy to scratch the screen, which quickly makes the colour screen all but useless for viewing album art and photos stored on the machine. Apple's discussion forums are already host to hundreds of threads on this topic."

geniusj writes "Warner Music Group CEO, Edgar Bronfman Jr., has fired back at Steve Jobs in response to the Apple CEO's claim that having variable pricing for iTunes music would be 'greedy.' From the article: 'To have only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers. The market should decide, not a single retailer ... Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. I don't want to give anyone the impression that $0.99 is a thing of the past ... We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don't have a share of iPod's revenue ... We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only.' Perhaps iPods combined with iPods are selling music as well, and it's not just a one-way street?"

Brett writes "Tommi Kyyrä, of IFPI Finland has said that being able to play music on a Linux or Apple computer is a privilege not a right, and that those that can't because of DRM'd CDs should just go out and buy a CD player. Is switching the debate to rights and privileges really where they want to go when we're talking about something we pay for?" From the article: "If the public and 'their' politicians believe that the entertainment industry is on the verge of collapse, they'll be much more likely to accept restrictions on use of content that they've paid for. For this reason, most industry talking heads keep their comments in check when talking about DRM schemes, but from time to time we've seen people truly speak their mind."

Ant writes "BusinessWeek Online reports that researcher iSuppli took a look inside the iPod Nano to find out how much Apple is making off it, and who supplies its parts. From the article: 'Apple has sold some 16 million iPods in the first nine months of fiscal 2005, and 21 million since its inception. Thus far in fiscal 2005, the iPod has brought in $2.6 billion in revenue, accounting for about 25% of Apple's total.'"

GeoffP writes "AppleTalk Australia is running a story on running KDE on Mac OS X. For those that don't know, KDE is a graphical desktop environment used to access your computer's files. Finally, Mac users have a free (as in speech) approach to their filesystem."

sebFlyte writes "Those of you waiting for a video iPod, an iPod with a radio in, an iPod with Bluetooth in...or in fact an iPod that does anything except play music and have a pretty-but-basic interface, you're likely to be disappointed. According to silicon.com, Steve Jobs and the Apple crew insist that the iPod will remain simple for the time being." From the article: "Whether people want to buy a device just to watch video is not clear - so far the answer's been no. Devices that do video... have not been successful yet. No-one's figured out the right formula."

Drew writes "Steve Jobs is opposed to raising the price of online music sales, calling the music industry greedy, and implying that price increases will bring about more piracy." From the article: "It may not seem like it, but it has been more than two years since the launch of the iTunes Music Store, and that alone has the music industry brimming with hopes for price-adjustments. They also don't buy Jobs' argument that a price increase will result in more piracy, but probably not for the reasons we might assume. I've long been of the conviction that piracy is not nearly as large of a problem as the RIAA makes it out to be." Also covered at Macworld.

An Anonymous Reader writes "Macworld has a piece looking at why Apple chose Intel chips over AMD's offerings when it decided to move away from IBM." From the article: "The reason, industry analysts say, is that Jobs has a clear goal in mind: innovative designs. And such designs require the lowest-voltage chips, which IBM and Freescale were not going to make with the PowerPC chip core--and which AMD has not yet perfected 'This is a practical, pragmatic Steve Jobs decision,' says Shane Rau, Program Manager, PC Semiconductors for market research firm IDC. Intel serves up the most complete line of low-power chips for mobile and small form factor computers, and a good-looking future roadmap for it. Also, Intel's mammoth production capacity erases any supply worries. "

phaedo00 writes "Apple has launched support for video podcasting in the Podcast section of the iTMS. Ars Technica has a decent write up of the news along with speculation on what this means in the way of a video iPod and Apple's recent application for a patent on the phrase 'iPodcast.'" From the article: "The quiet, fanfare-less launch (in fact, it's not even clear when it was launched) is a bit surprising for the company, but there may be a reason: there's not too many video podcasts out there in the wild. Furthermore, video podcasts are currently only playable on your computer, although it seems clear enough that a video iPod is on the way. If you didn't believe it before, you should definitely believe it now. For now, it looks like video podcasting support is limited."

Brett writes "Despite claims to the contrary, it now appears that Apple didn't do any serious investigation inside the company before they sued AppleInsider and the PowerPage. This is quite a bit of a problem because Californian law and First Amendment precedent requires Apple check up on itself before threatening journalists. From the article, "It appears that Apple has adopted a shoot-first, ask questions later approach to dealing with rumors sites. The company took no depositions, required no oaths from its employees, and failed to subpoena anyone related to the company or the development of the device in question.""

bonch writes "A Time Magazine article on the behind-the-scenes development of the iPod nano reveals that development work began just nine months ago, when the iPod mini was still a top-seller. Every internal component was redesigned and packed into every millimeter of the space inside. Famed Apple designer Jonathan Ives spent months on the tiniest of details, like the laser-etching of the logo and the roughness of the clickwheel compared to the smoothness of the rest of the exterior. 'I know you're not going to consciously find these details particularly appealing," says Ives, 'but I think it's the fact that we've worried about all of them that makes the product so precious.'"

aardwolf64 writes "ThinkSecret has an article up detailing information about the newest Mac OS X 10.4.3 builds (which is currently said to fix almost 500 bugs with 10.4.2.) What is more interesting is the release of 10.4.2 (Intel) to developers. Universal binaries built with the new version (and apparently all subsequent versions) will not work on systems running the older version of the OS."

vishnu writes "CoolTechZone.com is running a story that analyzes Apple's strategy with ROKR. According to the author, the phone disappoints, but is this Apple's way of testing a potential market. Quote: "There was nothing wrong with the creative cells of the designers at Apple; ROKR is simply Jobs taking a calculated risk. He doesn't want a cell phone that doubles as an MP3 player to become too popular as that would cut straight into Apple's bread and butter product, the iPod. On the other hand, Jobs knows for a fact that in the future cell phones will play a huge role in portable digital music; therefore, he is hedging his bets. He wants to give people a taste of what is to come but at the same time, he wants to project phones as an extension but not a replacement of a portable music player. He's consequently hoping to discomfort Apple's competition with a cell phone that has nothing but iTunes going for it."

John Murrell writes "Given the insatiable appetite for Apple rumors, analysis and speculation, SiliconValley.com has opened a week long roundtable discussion on the company's post-Intel future. Among those on the panel are Andy Hertzfeld, Tim Bray, Brent Simmons, John Gruber, Keven Krewell, Mark Gonzales and Leander Kahney."

starwindsurfer wrote to mention an Ars Technica review of the iPod nano in which they autopsy the cute little guy to find out what makes him tick. A more thorough review than the one we ran last week. From the article: "At this point we were astounded that the iPod nano was still working properly, albeit with a broken display. Because we had honestly expected the iPod nano to break by this time, we were forced to depart from our planned schedule of destruction and try and run over it with the car. Surely, we thought, it could never withstand the crushing power of German automotive engineering." Update: 09/12 14:58 GMT by Z : Changed linking words to previous article for clarity. Monday fuzziness.

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has some interesting commentary on the new iPod cellphone." From the article: "The music-player module works like an iPod - though it lacks the clickwheel that makes its big brothers function so slickly. But overall, the impression is distinctly underwhelming. The word on the streets is that far from being the revolutionary device that will bring about media 'convergence', the Rokr is, well, just the sum of its parts. And that, it seems to me, is the most interesting thing about it."

Stephen de Vries writes "Mac OS X is one of the most secure default installations of any OS. But it is still possible to lock the OS down further, in order to meet corporate security guidelines or to securely use network services. Corsaire has released a guide to Securing Mac OS X Tiger (long pdf) which addresses the new security features introduced through Tiger and presents some security good practice guidelines."