GraWil wonders: "The Tolis Group has just released BRU LE for Mac OS X. It is far more reasonably priced than the professional version but it is still priced well above the personal edition for Linux and BSD users. Does anyone have experience they can share about strategies for backing up Powerbook and Desktop Mac I am using a total of 140GB of the 180GB available)?"

OmniVector writes "With various complaints about the iPod battery's life, and its mere 10-8 hours of charge many of us are left looking for a way to keep the tunes kicking a little longer. Drew Perry has come up with a novel solution which can only run you a few bucks for an extra 10 hours of battery life out of a box of playing cards and a everyday batteries. Not bad for that long car trip where you just don't have a firewire charger handy."

Espectr0 writes "The Inquirer reports rumors, courtesy anonymous sources, that Microsoft has released the Xbox 2 SDK to select videogame developers, and they are using 'dual Apple Power Mac G5 systems running a custom Windows NT Kernel.' This ties up with earlier rumors which mention that the XBox 2 will be powered by the IBM chip, and ATI will be providing the video chip." The report also notes: "Interestingly, the SDK apparently also features an Apple logo on a side bar within the application."

Green and Geeky writes "That Marvel of a PDA, the Newton MessagePad, has always been a good product. It does a lot of things: plays MP3s, connects to the Internet wirelessly, can be used to bludgeon someone, fits in your pocket (if you're a giant), etc. Now, it plays Nintendo games. Strange, yes, but still pretty cool. I can't play Legend Zelda, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Warrior on my Palm V." And I don't need to waste money on a Game Boy Advance!

tritone writes "Some fearless soul has disassembled his iPod mini and provided pictures and commentary about the process. This really does seem to be an autopsy since he managed to kill it in the process. That's $249 well spent in the pursuit of knowledge. See the full report at www.ipodlounge.com."

djhanson wonders: "I just got back from a small claims court proceeding against Apple Computer. They successfully won their argument in front of the court that selecting additional memory and disk drives for a computer/server at the time of purchase, off of their website, constitutes a 'custom configured computer built to the customer's specifications'. Said computer is therefore not eligible under the company policy to be returned. Has anyone else heard of such a thing? As near as I can tell, Apple is the only company that has such a restrictive policy. I called both IBM and HP, and neither of those companies has such a policy. Am I the only one that thinks there is something terribly wrong with a policy like this? Any opinions? Suggestions? Comments? Whatever?"

PurdueGraphicsMan writes "There's an interesting story over at Wired News, involving an interview with UK university professor Dr. Michael Bull, apparently the 'world's leading expert on the social impact of personal stereo devices,' according to The New York Times. The piece also mentions: 'Bull, a lecturer in media and culture at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, is the author of 'Sounding out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life', a book Bull calls the 'definitive treatment' of the impact of the Sony Walkman and its descendants.'"

XO Play writes "XO Play today released an adventure story game for the iPod called 'The Rise Of The Lost,' puts you in the role of Sir Jacob Zaviour. Your mission is to travel through lands and fight the evil Wizard Sazque. As you read through the adventure you will be asked to choose your destiny by selecting from a number of options found at the bottom of the page, similar to the 'choose-your-own-adventure' series. The game costs $9.99 is played via the Notes section of your iPod." It wouldn't take too much to write a generator for such games, as Notes uses small text files with HTML tags for links, as long as you had the data to do it with.

FreakyControl writes "Popular Science is running an article this month about how to change that dead iPod battery, along with links to sites that have other cool iPod hacks. It looks like Casey Neistat figured out how to do it for them, after ruining his own during a similar attempt: 'A few weeks later, PopSci gave him another third-party battery, this time from pdasmart.com ($60), and another iPod from a staffer with the same problem. That one survived and went back to its owner. And Casey ended up spending $400 on a new one.' Looks like all you iPod people may still have hope!"

EvanKai writes "To celebrate Grey Tuesday, Eminem sues Apple to show his support for hiphop and sampling. CBS MarketWatch is reporting that 'Rapper Eminem's music publisher is suing Apple Computer Inc., claiming the company used one of the hip-hop superstar's songs in a television advertisement without permission. Eight Mile Style filed the copyright infringement suit late last week against Apple, Viacom Inc., its MTV subsidiary and the TBWA/Chiat/Day advertising agency.' While the ad in question no longer appears, several similar ads can be found here. I can't believe Chiat Day failed to clear the use of these songs with Pink, Mariah Carey, and The Who... or whatever major label actually owns the rights."

bennomatic writes "Apple is finally making good on those iBook repairs we've heard so much about over the past several months. I just got my letter in the mail the other day which I had to sign and swear that I had indeed paid for the logic board repair in question. The letter stated that the refund would be made within 4-6 weeks following their receipt of my letter. It's funny that, with all of the fuss over the fact that they were not fixing the problem, there's been barely a whisper on the Mac web about the fact that it's all being taken care of."

John writes "Chip manufacturer Portal Player in Santa Clara builds the embedded PP5002 chip in Apple's iPod (allowing the playing of AAC and MP3). It has emerged that the chip firmware, by default, allows the playing of WMA. However, for some reason this is locked by Apple."

dave at hostwerks writes "The iPod Mini is now shipping. The number of pre-ordered units was about 100,000. CBS News has a good write-up as well as an accompanying piece they ran on the Saturday evening news report here in the U.S."

PurdueGraphicsMan writes "Much as we'd love to see the next PowerBook revision include a processor evolution to the mighty G5, we know it's not that simple. The Register provides some sound reasoning (and boatloads of model numbers and voltage specs) as to why we'll probably see a 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook before any G5 PowerBooks materialize." I don't want a G5 on my lap anyway. It'd make me feel guilty, having that much power in a small package while other people can't even get it in a PC tower. Oh, and I don't want to burn my lap.

dbesade writes "Apple has released a security update for Mac OS X. The update includes changes to disk arbitration, IPsec, the point-to-point protocol, and tcpdump. As usual the changes have not been posted to the Apple Support Website."

Spencerian writes "Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther is a good tool for those who are experienced with the original Mac OS or Mac OS X, but not the Unix command line. Most of the content would not interest the traditional programmer, Linux, BSD, or other UNIX jockey, however." For Spencerian's take on why, read on for the rest of his review.

fredrikr writes "UK-based security firm mi2g has analyzed 17,074 successful digital attacks against servers and networks. The results are a bit surprising. The BSD OSes (including FreeBSD and Mac OS X) proved to be the systems least likely to be successfully cracked, while Linux servers were the most vulnerable. Linux machines suffered 13,654 successful attacks, or 80 percent of the survey total. Windows based servers enjoyed a sharp decline in successful breaches, with only 2,005 attacks."

Pieter Townshend writes "Found on GMSV: 'In the days leading up to Napster's re-launch last October, a deal that would have put Napster links on millions of Hewlett-Packard computers went bad. HP withdrew from the agreement at the last minute, its reasons for doing so becoming clear three months later when it announced a surprise partnership with Apple to feature the iTunes Music store on HP computers and sell Hewlett-Packard branded iPod music players.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Someone posted a technique to find a winner in the iTunes Pepsi promo giveaway." Next step: a Pepsi/iTMS winning number generator!

An anonymous reader writes "99mac.se publishes an internal memo from Steve Jobs to Apple employees today. According to the Memo, Jobs states that "Today is a historic day of sorts for our company." Apple used $300 million in cash to pay off the rest of their debt, and is now a debt-free company. A big turnaround from over $1 billion in debt in mid-1997. Also noted in the memo is that Apple has $4.8 billion in the bank at this time." (Since this is not coming straight from Apple, confirmation -- or debunking -- would be helpful.)